


This Day, A Life

by DarknessAroundUs



Series: A Written Life [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Books, Editor Betty Cooper, F/M, Fertility Issues, Found Family, Writer Betty Cooper, Writer Jughead Jones, Writing, modern love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2019-12-07 15:17:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18236669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarknessAroundUs/pseuds/DarknessAroundUs
Summary: At six thirty Betty is running the reservoir in Central Park. At noon Jughead tries to talk a student out of making a critical mistake that has nothing to do with writing. At seven they have family dinner with Toni and Archie.Just a collection of ordinary days in the life they've built together.Coda to a Grand Mistake.





	1. Eight Years Later

**Author's Note:**

> The first chapter takes place eight years after A Grand Mistake.
> 
> This is a coda to A Grand Mistake but it should be able to stand alone.

**6:30 AM**

Betty runs her fifth loop around the reservoir. The water reflects the vibrantly orange leaves of the trees that surround it. 

She listens to the heavy beat of her music, and she tries to time her footfalls to it. She passes by another regular runner and they nod at each-other. Betty doesn’t know his name and she probably never will, but they nod hello to each other almost every morning.

Betty’s trying to focus on the rhythm of the run, the beauty of the trees, but each loop she does, there is another thought that hums inside her. A question that repeats in her brain like the chorus of a song, what if she’s pregnant? What if while she runs this loop over and over again she’s actually multi-tasking and inside her a small child is growing.

Since she quit taking birth control her periods been erratic, impossible to track, and while she’s not yet at the stage where she is monitoring her hormones daily, she might be soon. It’s been a year since Betty stopped renewing her prescription. A year since she said hello to her pharmacist every month. 

She runs home. They live two blocks from the reservoir, so it’s an easy jog. Their new condo, the one they actually own, is small but bigger than two people need it to be. They’re on the third floor. They don’t have a view of the park, but they do have a nice view of the street, tree lined and gracious. 

She opens the door, pours herself a big glass of water and drinks it while staring at their wedding photo that hung on the wall across from the couch. No would know it was a wedding photo unless they were told. 

Jughead is wearing dark wash jeans and simple dark button up and Betty is wearing a blue sundress. They are in a bookstore, setting on the floor, leaning against a wall of shelves. Betty’s head is on Jughead’s lap and he is reading to her. They both have bare feet. The joy they felt on that day is visible in the photo. It almost glows.

It is the only personal photo in the apartment. The rest of the art is largely paintings they found at weekend markets. Most of the walls are empty and painted a light blue that Betty finds calming.

After she finishes the water she heads to their bedroom. Jughead is sprawled across the bed, taking up as much space as he can. When they sleep at night, he’s always considerate but the minute she leaves the bed every morning to run he takes over the rest. 

He stirs slightly, but doesn’t get up. Betty has a long hot shower, and when she gets out, she takes a pregnancy test. She should be buying them in bulk now. She can’t resist checking every two weeks, or if she’s really self disciplined, every month. 

She stares at the timer on her phone as it counts down. The first few times she did this was with Jughead, the two of them waiting nervously on the edge of the tub. Now she prefers to do it on her own without preamble. Betty always tells him right after. 

She does a wall sit for the last minute just to help her nerves dissipate, then when the timer bings she stands up and goes over to the test, no second line has appeared. 

Betty throws the test away and washes her hands. She pulls on the clothes she laid out last night next to the sink, and then she makes her way out to the bed. Jughead’s still lying there, but his eyes are open now. He looks content. His hair a giant mess, sticking every which way.

“I love you.” He says.

“I peed on a stick.” Betty answers, lying down beside him, snuggling into his side. She feels over dressed, but she really needs the comfort his body brings. 

She knows she is crying, but she tries not to focus on that. Instead she thinks about how nice it feels to have his arm around her. 

“I take it those aren't happy tears.”

“Not even a little.” 

Jughead presses one kiss into the side of her neck. “Maybe we have to see a fertility specialist.” 

For years Betty was too scared to even think about kids. With her family history of mental instability it felt like too much of a risk, Fred’s casual hints about grandkids were always dismissed with a smile. 

But over time that changed. She started noticing other people’s children at museums, at the park, on the subway. She watched them interact with their parents, sometimes out of love, other times out of fury. 

Betty remembers sitting beside a young boy and his mother on the M train late at night, and the boy telling his mother all about what it would be like to be a cat. How his favorite thing in the whole world would be cuddles and a piece of string. Betty texted Jughead that she wanted kids as soon as she got off that train, she couldn’t wait to tell him in person. 

Jughead had always been pro-children, but he’d left her alone about it (“It’s not like I can get pregnant. It’s your choice”) so when she told him she changed her mind, he was ecstatic. 

Jughead puts his arms around her. “No matter what happens, you make me happy.” he says slipping off her shirt and throwing it on the floor.

For a second she thinks about protesting, but he has both arms around her waist and it feels good. It also feels like the right course of action, a new source of hope. 

“Hey, I just put that on.” Betty protests weakly. Then she removes her own bra. He kisses her chest.

“For now we just have to keep trying.” He says, as he removes her skirt and her stockings.

“We’ve never struggled with trying.” 

“No, we haven't.” His face seems to glow with joy, with the confidence he has in the way their bodies move together.

 

**9:00 AM**

Jughead is lecturing a class of graduate students. All twenty of them are there today, taking notes or pretending to. He has a strict no cell phones in class policy, so at least everyone is trying to work. 

After he finishes talking about the importance of not copywriting your own work, they start the workshop portion of the class. 

The first piece that they workshop is from a student named Emily and it is a complete mess. He’s not even sure what the plot is supposed to be, never mind the characters. He wonders how she got in here in the first place with work like that. 

He has tenure at Columbia and they have with an under 1% acceptance rate for graduate studies and he has to read crap all the time. He’s still not sure how that works. 

The second student to workshop is Javier. His piece has the kind of sharp edge that appeals to Jughead, and while the characterization is weak, everything else is vital and alive. If Jughead could publish it himself he would, and he says as much. 

The final student to workshop is by Thomas. His work is very in the moment, and more typical of the undergraduate work Jughead sees over and over again. It’s a tale of struggling with dating, that involves four partners all with the same name, and Jughead hopes that at least that part is fictional. 

The problem is that Thomas tries to make his work an essay. The last three paragraphs feel like more of a thesis statement (and a bad one at that), than a fictional conclusion. None of Thomas’s fellow students bring that up. 

**10:00 AM**

Betty’s at her desk in The New Yorker. As the assistant editor, her office is one of the nicer ones in the building. Still today she feels like she might as well be working in a cubicle for all the foot traffic she’s had through her workspace. Wallace, the head editor stops by, and then a gaggle of interns, followed by the new fiction editor.

Now while she’s sipping coffee, she hears a knock at the door and looks up to see Lucas walk in. He comes around the desk to where she is standing and gives her a hug. Lucas is a regular contributor to the New Yorker, but he’s rarely in the office. He does most of his writing in coffee shops and at home. 

They don’t have a meeting scheduled today, and his next article isn’t due for another month, but he often drops by if he’s in the area and they get coffee.

“What are you doing in Manhattan?” Betty asks. Lucas got married a year out of graduate school to Lila a women he’d only known for a few months. If Betty hadn’t seen how Lila and Lucas interacted she would have predicted disaster, but after she saw Lila and Lucas together, she couldn’t imagine either of them with anyone else. 

They had three kids now, all school age, and now that they were in school Lucas had more free time again. He was an active part of both she and Jughead’s lives.

“I actually came in to the city to work out with Jughead.” Lucas says with a shrug, “but he cancelled on me last minute, so I thought I would have coffee with you instead.”

“That jerk.” Betty says without malice. Jughead runs with her twice a week now, and tries to work out with Lucas once or twice a week, but try is the operative word. Instead he and Lucas often go out for lunch or coffee or donuts (sometimes even all three). Jughead is always trying to get out of exercising.

“He’d forgotten about a facility meeting.”

“I’m skeptical.”

“I’m not, because I actually showed up at his office as he was dashing out of it.”

Betty laughs. Jughead had a reputation at Columbia for being one of the best teachers but also one of the most forgetful. He had been known to miss his own office hours on more than one occasion. 

“Besides he might hate sweating in the gym, but he’s never bowed out on spending time with me.” Lucas adds. 

Betty shakes her head. Jughead loathes exercising at the gym the most. He’d much rather be outside. As much as he tries to make it more palatable by going with Lucas, Lucas actually forces him to sweat, rather than letting him read while walking on the treadmill. 

“So will you get coffee with me?” Lucas asks again, looking a little unsure of himself now.

Betty presses one hand to her chest in mock shock. “Wait, am I now your back up Jones? You were friends with me first.”

Lucas just laughs, as she grabs her purse and says “I should warn you that I only have a few minutes.”

“When do you ever have more than that?” 

There is a lot of truth in those words. If Betty has indeed become Lucas’s back-up Jones, it was because Jughead’s schedule allowed for a lot more flexibility than hers. Academia allowed for a lot more free time than editorial work.

 

**12:00 PM**

Jughead’s busy grading when he hears the knock on his office door. He glances up at the time. It’s right at the end of his office hours, but he’s not going to hold that against anyone. It happens. He did it back in the day. Plus he still has enough coffee left in his mug to get him through the meeting. 

“Come in.” He says, and Thomas walks in. The short story he had workshopped this morning is in his hand. The red ink Jughead had scrawled all over it is visible even from the other side of the office.

Thomas slumps into one of the chairs across the desk from Jughead. With no preamble he says “So you hated my work?”

Jughead is not used to students actually coming to office hours for feedback. Usually he will just received an angry email or something along those lines. 

“No. I just didn’t connect with it.” Jughead says. “I made that clear in my comments. I know your story is a work of fiction, but my primary critique was that it had a clear idea behind it that I didn’t agree with, and I didn’t like the way it was conveyed. You wrote a fictional piece, but the end read like a bad persuasive essay.”

“But it was fiction. I wasn’t saying my thesis was right or not.” Thomas says with a sigh, flipping some of his brown hair out of his face. Jughead thinks the fact that he used the word thesis to describe the ideas conveyed in a work of fiction is telling.

“Then why have a thesis at all?” Jughead says. If Thomas was going to use that word, so would he. “The way the idea was presented felt like you were forcing non-fiction ideas into a fictional piece.” 

Thomas looks a little surprised to be called out so directly. Jughead could have softened the blow a little, but he doesn’t see the point in that. The story Thomas wrote felt like hundreds of others he’d read, about the culture of sleeping around. This in and of itself had potential to be interesting. But most of the stories seemed to focus on this idea that sleeping around was the only way to find your match. 

Jughead might have once slept around, but he never thought the end result would be a soulmate. Even the former version of himself would have thought that premise preposterous.

“But I think it’s an important point to make, right now.” Thomas said. His brown eyes focused on Jughead’s face. “I know things were different back in your day, but I thought you’d understand that this was about what dating is like now.”

Jughead hated what he nicknamed “the old card”. It was a critique he had received many times before in spite of the fact that he was the second youngest prof in the entire department, and was probably only about a decade older than Thomas. 

Even though he did understand that culturally they had different perspectives. After all Jughead hadn’t dated anyone that wasn’t Betty in ten years. 

“I get that it’s different now.“ Jughead says. “But what exactly are you trying to communicate in your story that sets your work apart?”. 

“This story is about how love works in contemporary cultures. Now you need a resume of past partners and experiences in order to find your life partner.”

Jughead scoffs “Ok, first of all students have believed variations on that for the last twenty years at least and it is frankly bullshit. I read at least three stories every semester, but usually more than ten that are just about that.”

“Oh.” Thomas says, exhaling loudly. “Still that doesn’t make it less true.”

“Really?” Jughead raises an eyebrow.

“You have a serious partner, right?” Thomas asks. 

There are no photos of Betty in Jughead’s office, he rarely mentions her in class, but every book he has written is dedicated to her. She meets him after his Friday night class every week. She visits him in his office whenever she can. 

“Wife. Yes. Very.”

“And is she the only person you’ve ever slept with?” 

Jughead finds himself balking at the boldness of Thomas’s question, but still he feels that he has to answer it. This isn’t just a literary discussion here, it is one about the way the world actually works, and as far as Jughead is concerned, Thomas appears to be-miseducated on that as well.

If this was an undergrad student he was talking to Jughead would not answer. But Thomas would likely have his masters degree in two years time, he may already be teaching students of his own next fall. Jughead doesn’t like to coddle graduate students.

“No. Before my wife and I dated, I slept around. I didn’t think of it as building a resume, as you put it. It was more something I did because sometimes it felt good, it was easy. It just seemed like the thing to do.”

“Oh.” 

“But that’s not how I found my wife. In fact the fact that i’d slept around was one of the reasons she was hesitant to date me.”

Jughead could tell Thomas was really thinking now. He was still and focused. “But what about your wife? Did she not have a dating resume?”

There was that damned phrase again. Such a misnomer. “She had been in two serious relationships before.”

Thomas nods. “Everyone’s different right? My story, my life could work this way.”

“Yes, it could, particularly if this is the only way you try to find your partner. But a word of caution, the person I know who has slept around the most is my age and they are still sleeping around. They’ve never had a serious relationship.” Jughead says with a shrug. “But look, this isn’t relevant to the story. The story has to feel real, and I think if you take out the explicit statements you make about how love works, and you add in another element I think you will be headed in the right direction.” 

“Ok.” Thomas said, getting up. He has a relieved look on his face, like he is suddenly desperate to get out of the office.

“I can grade the revised version if you want?” Jughead offers.

“That would be great.”

 **12:30 PM**

Betty’s office door is locked. Everyone knows not to knock. Her door is open from 9 to 11 and then from 1 to 5. When it’s closed, it is because Betty’s busy, not out to lunch, or having a private conversation. 

The first year Betty worked at the New Yorker, she was so excited about the job she had, she didn’t think about boundaries, didn’t implement them, at least not at work. She was one of the few people who left every day at 5 and did not take any work home with her. But she didn’t have energy when she left. 

For that whole first year she didn’t write for herself. She didn’t have the time, or the mental energy. At the end of the year she felt like she was no longer herself, but an echo of who she once had been. She had almost quit her job. 

Sometime early in her second year at the New Yorker, she found herself. It wasn’t easy though. It was difficult, time consuming work, that involved trying everything from meditation to kombucha to pills. 

It turns out in the end the answer was much simpler than what she thought it would be. The key component to maintaining her mental health, turned out to be writing. Not just a line here or there, but a solid chunk of time devoted to the craft of writing, the act of putting one word after another and then editing it until it was more than the sum of its parts. 

At first it was a struggle to find the time to write. She and Jughead took a week vacation to Big Sur and wrote together every day and it felt like a gift but then they were back home and three weeks later she hadn’t written a line post vacation and she was once again struggling.

So she implemented a strict lunch hour routine. She would actually eat the lunch she brought to work (a salad, a sandwich, or a smoothie) at 11:45, sometimes with a friend, and then at 12 she would lock the office door, and write. At first her colleagues would try and talk to her during this time. Now they knew better. 

Some days were easier than others of course. Some days she wrote easily and swiftly. Other days it was slow hard work that resulted in nothing good. 

Right now though, the writing was good. One sentence followed the other with practiced ease. It was as if she was meant to be writing what she was writing.

At first she was unsure of the underlying topic of the collection of essays she was currently working on, the theme that would unite them. But last week she figured it out. She was writing ultimately about what it meant to be a family, what it meant to make a family. Weather that family involved adoption, marriage, or simply close friendships. How formal culture, how legal culture devalues such things. 

Her fingers are loud and fast on the keyboard, her mind is focused on what she wants to convey. 

**3:30 PM**

Jughead had spent more time in his office today than he usually did. He was currently meeting with Jeremy Lin, who was doing a cover story on him for Poets & Writers. He had hoped to meet in Jeremy’s office so that he could have a change of scenery, but Jeremy had insisted that the context of Jughead’s office helped. 

Jeremy had actually initially invited himself over to Jughead’s apartment, but Jughead had managed to prevent that, or at least delay it. There would probably be a follow up interview to this one. Jughead hated having to open his home to anyone he didn’t already know well.

Plus based on the first twenty minutes or so of this interview he wasn’t very impressed with Jeremy. All the questions Jeremy asked so far were standard ones Jughead had answered or avoided answering for years. Still every new book Jughead publishes requires a new round of promotion.

Jeremy looks up from his laptop where he just typed another round of notes based on what Jughead said and asks “Why do you no longer write about your personal life?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your first book was all about your life in a gang. It was fiction, technically, but most of the elements of the story were true. Since then you’ve written a novel about private detectives in the 1950’s, and a novel about a pyromaniac in Ohio. Why the switch?”

It is a good question, even if it has been asked before.

“The truths about my life back then were cheap and shallow. Easy to share. Now life is so much deeper so much harder to translate, to convey.” Jughead says. “It’s much easier to write fiction now that i’m older, less caught up in my own story.”

“So growing older is the real reason?”

Jughead shakes his head. His life back when he wrote his first book was so simple, so disposable in a way. He can’t imagine really being able the complexities and wonders of being in love, of being in a serious long term relationship, where a word as simple as papaya could reduce them both to laughter. Where every word, every gesture has history. To try and reduce that to words on a page is an impossibility. 

“Part of it.” Jughead says. He is notorious for trying to leave Betty out of interviews. Everyone knows who she is as well, thanks to her first book, the one she wrote in graduate school, as well as her personal history. 

Even now their relationship is presented in one of two ways. The first is that it is a relationship between a criminal and a crime fighter, the second is one that focuses on Betty’s sexulity. It is best for him not to contribute to either of those narratives.

“What’s your wife working on right now?” Jeffery asks, as if he can sense what Jughead is thinking about.

“You can interview her if you want to know.” Jughead says, a shallow grin on his face.

Jeffery’s head shake makes it clear he’s not happy with the answer but he moves on to another question. 

**4:15 PM**

Betty is looking at photos of their friend’s kids on Instagram. It’s a habit she’s tried to break herself of, but it is start to feel more and more impossible. So many people have what she wants.

She forces herself to turn her phone off. She stands up and goes to get coffee at the kitchenette. It’s too early to go home, and the office is still filled with people talking and laughing. They all seem more alive then her. 

She’s passing her friend Emily’s desk when she hears her mutter “What the fuck?” 

Betty stops and asks her “What is it?” 

Emily looks up from her desk, her orange hair falling back from her face “Oh, Betty. Don’t mind me. It’s just been a bad day.”

“Why?”

“I just found out my parent’s house was broken into, their passports were stolen and a few family heirlooms.” 

“I’m so sorry.” Betty places a gentle hand on Emily’s shoulder. 

“It’s just the cop that did the investigation made me so mad. He made it clear to them he’s not even going to look into it.”

Betty feels her stomach clench. She’s known a lot of cops in her days as a PI, mostly great ones, but there were a few that didn’t care about anything but their paycheck. 

Still Betty’s tracked down more than her fair share of passports. “Let me look into it.”

A surprised look crosses Emily’s face. They’ve been friends for years. Still it’s entirely possible that Emily never knew Betty was a PI or that she knew but forgot. It was a long time ago after all.

“I used to do this professionally.” Betty says.

“Oh.” Emily answers, she still looks stunned, but her expression softens a little. “Thank you.”

 

**4:45 PM**

Jughead is grabbing coffee before his last class of the day. He skips the long line at the Starbucks by using the Ap. He also likes the added benefit that using the Ap prevents any awkward conversations about his name.

He arrives at the bar before his drink does, a rare occurrence, so he takes the spare second to text Betty - “I love you, dearest friend”.

Jughead sees the three dots appear right away and then the line “I love you. Grabbing coffee?”. He laughs to himself. She knows him so well. Sometimes he wonders if she knows him better than he knows himself. Jughead has decided that if it’s true it is a good and rare thing.

“Do you think everyone misses their partner during work?” He texts her on a whim,hHis drink finally appearing on the bar.

He picks it up and glances back at his phone to see the text “One would hope.” on the screen. He slips the phone into his pocket only for it to vibrate one more time, he can’t help but look at his phone while he steps out onto the street only to see the line “Unless they worked together.”

That is their dream after all, that somewhere down the line they will be established enough to only write, together at home. The dream is still a long way off, but he is so glad they share it.

Jughead enters the classroom in an exceptional mood. 

**7:10 PM**

“Wait, how quickly did you find her passport?” Archie asks. 

“It took me thirty minutes. They weren't her passports, they were her parent’s passports.” Betty says, trying to focus on evenly cutting the cucumbers for the salad.

“Still.” Archie says, as he lets out a low whistle and grabs a beer from the fridge. “Toni, you were a PI for a bit. Could you do that?”

Toni’s on the sofa, wine glass in hand, legs propped up on the ottoman. “Maybe in a day. But I wasn’t a PI for that long, it requires too much patience.”

Betty smiles. “It’s not like I was on my own, I used my old contacts. I still keep in touch. I need them from time to time anyways for investigative pieces.”

“Sometimes I think you secretly run this city.” Toni says, arching an eyebrow. 

Jughead unlocks the door and enters, he presses a kiss against Betty’s forehead as she continues to chop the cucumber for the salad. 

“Sorry I’m late. Where’s Veronica?” Jughead asks, placing a cake box on the counter.

“She couldn’t make it this week. She’s flying out to Milan tonight for a fashion event.” Toni says. “But she sends you all her love.”

“It’s nice to have a family dinner with just family every once in a while.” Archie says. 

Toni stands up, comes over and swats him on the side of the head gently, “Watch your mouth, Andrews.” She then steals three cucumber wedges before making her way back to the couch. 

“Betty and Jughead were thinking it too.” Archie says with a shrug. 

“I was not.” Jughead says.

“Maybe a little” Betty adds, even though she really loves Veronica. The two of them have become good friends in their own right, but she always felt like the truest family dinners were just made up of the four of them. 

Veronica had been around since Toni moved to New York, but the first five years it had been a casual on and off affair. Toni had never even bothered to bring her to their weekly family dinner at all. Then about four years ago Veronica started to attend with semi regularity. Only this year had she strived to show up every time. 

As much as Betty didn’t want to admit it, it had been an adjustment. She, Jughead, Toni, and Archie had grown so close, that it was hard to have another person there, and have to explain all their jokes and half finished sentences to that person. 

“Betty!” Toni protests.

“What? I love V. I just love having the four of us alone every once in a while.”

“I feel betrayed”, Toni says, but there is a smile in her eyes. “How goes the baby making mission?”

“Ewww.” Archie says covering his hands with his ears before adding “That’s my sister you’re talking about.”

“Now I feel betrayed.” Betty says, dumping all the toppings into the salad. She told Archie and Toni they were trying three months ago when she was going through a rough patch, and sometimes she’s really glad she did, and other times, like right now, she wishes she kept it to herself. 

Archie removes his hands from over his ears just as Jughead says “It’s ongoing.”

“I did not need to know that.” Archie says, but Betty knows he’s not serious because of his follow up question. “Have you guys thought about adopting?”

Betty can’t answer that question straight away. Of course she has thought about it. She is adopted after all, and being adopted was one of the biggest gifts anyone ever gave her. 

But it wasn’t like they had a neigbor child in need of adopting, and adopting a baby was a competitive and an expensive process. However they had been seriously considering fostering to adopt. Betty liked the idea of passing the gift of good parenting Fred had given her, to the next generation, although she sometimes doubted that she would do a good enough job. At least she knew she had a good example.

The one lawyer they had approached about it said that Jughead’s book and his admittance of criminal behavior in it, might get in the way of fostering or adopting.

Still Jughead answers for her “We’re thinking about it, of course.”

“I’m really glad you are thinking about it, but i’m still not going to babysit.” Archie says.

“We weren't planning on adopting a baby.” Jughead says, raising one eyebrow. Betty is filled with love for him in that moment. She knows how much he loves babies and toddlers, but here he is ready to follow her lead and adopt an older child if they can.

“Oh. The former troubled teens are taking on another's troubled teen.” Toni says with a smile.

“Something like that.”

“All of the baby clothes my dad bought are never going to be used.” Archie mumbles under his breath. No one engages in that line of conversation though.

“Either way, it’s going to take time.” Betty says. 

“Like this meal. I’m starving.” Jughead says as he grabs one of the pieces of bread from the bowl Betty had just set on the table. 

“Everything is ready as soon as you take the lasagna out of the oven. It’s just on warm.” Betty says, and soon they’re all eating together, as they have almost every Wednesday for the last decade. 

In some way this dinner is like everyone that precedes it. Archie talks about a girl he’s really into and has only gone on a couple of dates with (if that). Toni complains about the celebrities she has to photograph for work, and that causes Archie to complain about the rock stars he has to deal with as part of the record label. Jughead and Betty cuddle on the sofa after the meal.

Only after they mock Archie for his ridiculously high paycheck, Jughead will divulge a funny story about a student misunderstanding something critical about the English language. Betty will then try to change the subject to whatever story she’s editing this week. She only succeeds half the time, but it doesn’t really seem to matter. 

By the end it will be after midnight when Toni and Archie leave. Somehow even though it’s so predictable, it is the highlight of every week. 

**12:20 PM**

Jughead finishes brushing his teeth in the bathroom and walks over to where Betty is reading in bed. She’s reading A Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It’s a re-read for her. A favorite. 

All of the lights are off except for the two bedside lamps. Jughead switches his off as he slides into bed. He turns so that he’s spooning Betty. When his cold feet touch her warm ones, she squirms, but she doesn’t complain. She’s too used to his cold feet by now. 

“You’re not going to read?” She asks.

“Too tired.” He says with a yawn. “How about you read to me a little?”

“Not tonight.” Betty says, moving away from him for a second to put her book on the bedside table and turn the lamp off. She then settles back into the small spoon position, wiggling so that their bodies align properly.

“Toni told me something interesting.” Jughead says.

“Oh?”  
“She’s planning to propose to Veronica soon.”

“That is great. She didn’t go to you for advice did she?” 

Jughead can’t ignore the tone of skepticism in Betty’s voice entirely. He gets it. He was not the words best proposer. He asked her to marry him during a hike. Not by going down on one knee, or offering up some nice words about why he loved her so much, instead he just wedged it into their larger conversation, like he was asking her if she’d prefer chicken or fish for dinner.

They picked out the ring together a week later. Jughead knows Betty didn’t mind being a part of the process, but Veronica would have serious issues with something so off the cuff. 

“No. She just asked how I knew when it was the right time to ask you to marry me.” Jughead says. He throws an arm over Betty’s side and tugs her in even closer. 

“How did you know it was the right time for you to ask?”

“You told me you would be ready in two years. I didn’t want to push my luck.”

“Wait.” Betty pulls away and sits up in bed. The light from the street makes it easy for him to see the smile on her face. “Would you have asked me earlier if I hadn’t said that?”

“Of course.” 

“And you told Toni that?”

“No, I said as long as she went over the top Veronica was sure to say yes. Particularly if it was in public.”

Betty laughs and snuggles back into him. Her shirt had ridden up, so he feels her bare back against his belly. 

“Every person is so different. If you proposed to me in public I would have been pissed” 

“I know. I love you.” He leans forward slightly and presses a kiss against the back of her neck. “I’m so glad you chose to share your life with me.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”


	2. 3 Years Later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for KitteLee for her fabulous beta-ing. I feel so blessed to count her as a friend and a beta. 
> 
> Note that because Betty and Jughead are long distance this chapter he's in the pacific standard time zone and Betty is in the eastern standard time zone, which means Betty's three hours further into the day than Jughead. 
> 
> I am so grateful for the love this version of Bughead continues to get!

**8:00 AM PST**

Jughead’s exhausted, the last thing he wanted to do was take a red eye alone to Portland. But he did just that, and now he’s slumped in the backseat of a cab slowly making its way to Reed College, where he will be teaching for the next week.

When Jughead had agreed to teach at The Leopold Workshop a year ago, his life was entirely different. Back then it had seemed like an easy decision. It paid well and kept his name in circulation.

Besides, unlike some workshops where spouses were discouraged, many instructors brought their whole family. Betty could come with him. They had even talked about staying longer and driving down the coast to Cannon Beach.

Plus Jughead had heard great things about this workshop. The food was actually supposed to be good, and a number of writers Jughead admired would be there. 

Every morning Jughead would lead workshops with a curated group of twenty students, in the afternoons he was free to do what he pleased. In the evenings there would be author readings at an amphitheater by the river. He was looking forward to listening to those readings and giving one on Thursday.

Last July when Jughead had signed the contract, he and Betty were still making their way through the paperwork to become foster parents. The idea of being foster parents was shiny and abstract, filled with images of the park and crayons. Toys on the floor of their otherwise clean condo. Then they were given Jace.

On the first day, Jace broke Betty’s favorite framed photo and kicked a dent in his bedroom door. Both of them assumed that was just part of the adjustment period, a little hiccup. So what if he screamed whenever he was on the subway or in an elevator, this was just a stage.

It was true that Jace hadn’t destroyed anyone’s property recently and he could handle confined spaces better, but he still wasn’t comfortable in most public situations. The park yes, a coffee shop no. A car ride yes, a plane ride, forget about it. 

As hard as Jace could still be in public, he had become better in private. He had turned towards Betty for comfort first. A hug when he fell down. A forehead kiss when he was feeling bad. Just recently he had started to hug Jughead too. Two nights ago Jace had cuddled with him on the couch while watching Finding Nemo. 

Jace had started to talk more too. He had already started to tell stories to both of them about an imaginary land called Thoosta. Jughead loved him in a terrifyingly primal way.

There was no way he could bring Jace to Portland, there was no way Betty could leave Jace with someone else as the sole caregiver, and there was no way for Jughead to get out of the contract he signed with The Leopold Writing Workshop.

Which meant that Jughead was in Portland, childless for the first time in six months, and wife-less for the first time in almost a decade. 

Dan Young, the festival organizer meets Jughead’s taxi and covers the fare. 

Jughead and Dan have never met before, but they’ve talked a lot leading up to this, so Jughead almost feels like they’re friends. Dan does look much younger than he’d expected though. He has short blond hair and a good smile.

“Hi, nice to finally meet you,” Jughead says.

“Yes. It’s good to see you. We wish Elizabeth could be here as well.”

Jughead always finds it amusingly easy to tell if someone hasn’t met Betty before, because they use her full name, her authors name, rather than the one that suits her so well.

“She wishes that too,” Jughead says. “We just couldn’t do it with Jace.” Jughead hadn’t really explained the situation in detail over the phone. It felt too awkward.

“Is Jace your son?” 

The paperwork is still being finalized but it is all a matter of time, so Jughead says a simple “Yes”.

“Oh. I didn’t know Elizabeth was even pregnant. Congratulations.” Dan gestures for Jughead to follow him, and Jughead starts pulling his luggage behind him. The grounds of the campus are beautiful, lush and full of life. The buildings look very east coast for being out west. 

Jughead wishes that Betty could get pregnant. They had tried for a year without intervention, and then two more paying fertility specialists for every treatment that could theoretically work. There had been a lot of sleep and money lost, too many tears.

“We adopted Jace six months ago. He’s four.”

“Oh.” Dan says, turning towards him. “You didn’t get a baby?” as if it were that easy. Jughead forces his face not to react to the statement. 

“Betty was adopted at nine. She felt strongly about adopting someone older, someone who had less of a chance of finding a family.” Jughead tries not to be irritated. Betty’s new book, the one that will be published in a year, is all about family and adoption, nature and nurture, but it’s not like Dan could know that.

“She goes by Betty then?” Dan asks and then adds as if it’s an afterthought “I’m sorry, I’m asking so many questions, I really admire both your work, but her first book was life changing for me.”

“I’ll pass that on,” Jughead says as Dan leads him up the path of a big, beautiful house with a small porch.

“This is faculty housing for the week. If you came with Jace and Betty you would have ended up somewhere else, for future reference.” Dan says, handing Jughead a set of keys and a lanyard with his name printed on it. 

“Good to know.” 

He’s done a number of these weeklong workshops now. Enough to know that if you do it once and everyone gets along, they usually ask you back again and again. 

Workshops like this are a good way to supplement one’s income, but they’re also invigorating. To share a house with other writers is nice. The change of pace and place often helps the creative process. 

Everyone teaching here is well known and respected. There are actually two Pulitzer Prize winning authors staying in same house as Jughead right now, a fact he knows because he sees both their names on doors he passes on the way to his. 

Dan shows Jughead his room. It’s well-appointed with a good view of the campus and a simple queen bed and a desk. The desk has Jughead’s itinerary and orientation information on it. 

“Get unpacked. Look around and I’ll see you at the orientation lecture in three hours.”

Jughead doesn’t groan, though he wants to, instead he smiles and nods curtly. All he wants to do is sleep but that doesn’t seem likely with that small a window of time. 

**11 AM EST**

Betty chases Jace around the carpet, his shirt held high above her head. He’s screaming loudly, but it’s a happy kind of scream, as if he’s thrilled with the experience. 

Betty corners him and manages to slip the shirt over his head and then wrangle his flailing arms into the sleeves. That is when the door buzzer sounds. Betty glances at the video feed and sees that it’s Fred. She buzzes him up. 

Jace sees Fred on the monitor and starts doing his celebration dance. He kicks one leg out and then the other, his upper body stiff. Betty’s happy to see Fred as well but she doesn’t have a happy dance for him. 

Jace is leery around men in general, for reasons he probably doesn’t even remember or in any case can’t convey to them, but Fred somehow found his way through Jace’s defenses on their very first meeting.

Betty opens up the door and Fred steps through, a smile on his face, a duffle bag over his shoulder, and a small blue bag in his hands. 

“I told you not to bring anything,” Betty says after pulling back from the hug. 

“I couldn’t resist,” Fred says with a shrug, handing the bag to Jace. Jace reaches in and pulls out a bright blue plastic car.

“Yesss,”Jace cheers, doing his happy dance all over again. 

“What should you say to Fred?” Betty reminds Jace, once he’s calmed down, and cradling the car in the palm of his hand. 

“Thank you,” Jace says, hugging Fred’s leg. Fred ruffles his curly hair.

“You’re welcome buddy,” Fred says.

“Do you want coffee?” Betty offers. 

“Sure.” Fred and Jace say at the same time. 

“Ok,” Betty says, although obviously she is going to only get coffee for one of them. She starts boiling the water and preloading the French press with coffee beans.

“Has Jughead got in yet?” Fred asks.

“Yes. He called me from the cab. His flight was ok, for a red eye,” Betty says. Jughead’s barely been gone, yet still somehow she already misses him.

“I’m glad he went. I wish you could have gone too.”

“Next year, maybe.” Betty says. Although who knows. Jace has improved leaps and bounds since he moved in with them, and he’s starting school in the fall, but it still seems unimaginable to bring him to a college campus and expect him to be ok there for a long period of time. 

Just then, as if he knows she’s thinking about him, she gets a text from Jughead. _I miss you,_ is all it says, but it is accompanied by a photo of him pouting. Betty laughs. 

The kettle boils and she pours the water into the French press and sets a timer. Jace is playing quietly in the corner of the room. All his attention is focused on the car. Soon it will stop being so shiny and new and then Betty knows he will come to Fred and want a cuddle.

Betty turns towards where Fred is leaning against the kitchen island watching Jace and she says “Thank you for coming. You really don’t have to stay all week. I found a sitter that does a pretty good job with Jace for when I’m at work. Plus Archie, Veronica, and Toni, promised to help out a few nights a week.”

“That’s good. I’d like to see them,” Fred says with a wink. “I really want to be here and help out. I know I’m getting old, but I’m really not that frail. You and Archie are so independent now, I love to help when I can, how I can.”

“You’ve already helped out a lot,” Betty says. When they first brought Jace home, it was exhausting. The learning curve was steep. There were a few weeks Betty felt like they weren't going to make it, but Fred always drove down at just the right time and helped them out. He had saved their sanity more than once.

Teresa would come sometimes, but she still worked. Her schedule wasn’t flexible like Fred’s now that he retired. Besides as much as Teresa loved them and had become part of the family, she’d never had children of her own. When she interacted with Jace she was often stuck in teacher mode, a little too formal. 

“Betty, you’ve given me the best gift anyone could ever give me, a grandchild.” Fred reaches across the counter and squeezes her arm.

Betty smiles. Jace really is a gift. She looks at him now, his hair spiraling out, his arm pushing the car back and forth across the floor as he whispers “oomzoomoomzoom”.

Then the timer beeps, Betty pushes the handle down on the French press and pours two full mugs. 

When Fred clinks his against hers, she softly says “To family.”

 

**11:50 PST**

“I’m looking forward to getting to know you all. See you Monday,” Jughead says as a way to dismiss his new class after a game of introductions and a brief lecture about class expectations and explorations. 

One of the students, a young skinny man claps loudly. Everyone else looks at him with confusion as they get up. Jughead tries to remember the young man’s name but fails. The first two days are always the hardest for that. In any case his actions surprise Jughead because almost everyone in this class is not new to doing workshops. Most of Jughead’s students have their MFA’s, a few are even finishing up their PHD’s. 

“Excuse me Prof. Jones, I was wondering if I could ask you a question.” Jughead looks up to see who's asking the question. It’s a short woman, with long black hair tied in a top knot (Jughead only knows what to call the bun because of Betty). Jughead does remember her name, Clara.

“Yes, Clara. What do you want to ask?”

“Are you going to write a full length version of Murder Absurd?”

The class stills around them. Murder Absurd was a short story Jughead had written last year on a whim. He’d shown it to Betty and she’d loved it so much she’d shared it with a friend, who just happened to be the fiction editor. 

All that to say it went viral after The New Yorker published it, and Jughead who had been experiencing what could have been described as a small lull in his career before it’s publication, was suddenly under more scrutiny again. 

“No,” Jughead says. He’s told everyone who’s asked him about it during the last few months that, except for Betty. He’s even said it to his agent. But it’s not true. It is halfway to a novel in length already. It’s just so different than anything he’s written before. He keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop.

No one says anything further about that, but Clara’s question has opened the floor for everyone else and finally Jughead has to shoo them all out for lunch. 

When he turns his cell phone off airplane mode, he sees that Betty has sent him a picture of Jace reading with Fred on the sofa, and the sentence - _It’s going to be a long week without you_.

On his way to the cafeteria Jughead types back - _I don’t know what I’m going to do without both of you_.

**3:00 PM EST**

Fred’s napping in the guestroom while Jace jumps from the sofa to the floor and back to the sofa again. 

Betty’s trying to clean up the kitchen. There are cookies in the oven and a mess all over the counter. Her fingers are covered in dough when her phone starts to ring. Betty can see Jughead’s face on the screen, Jace does too because he leaps for the phone screaming “Juggie!”

Betty’s still trying to work on the words “dad” and “mom” but she doesn’t want to force it. If it doesn’t happen, she’ll understand. After all she calls Fred dad in her head all the time, but out loud she can’t manage it. 

Betty rubs the excess dough off with a tea towel and then answers the call with a simple swipe.

“Juggie! Juggie! Juggie!” Jace chants.

“You are missed.” Betty says, sitting down on the floor and pushing Jace gently into her lap. He grabs the phone from her, and she knows now all Jughead can see is Jace’s eyes, forehead, hair, and a bit of Betty’s neck, but Jace is happier that way. He feels closer to Jughead.

“I can hear how much you miss me,” Jughead says. Now that she’s close to the phone she can see how tired he looks.

“How did your first class go?” Betty asks, remembering for a brief moment that she used to ask questions like that about classes he was taking, not ones he was teaching.

“Good. I feel like half the people I see here want to meet you, maybe even more than they want to meet me.”

“I do have better connections.” Betty says. She knows how writers work, even established ones desperately want to get into The New Yorker for a career boost. Half the time when they meet her, they only know her as an editor for the New Yorker, not a writer. 

“I’m sure that’s not why.” 

Betty thinks it’s funny that someone whose been through as much as Jughead has would still almost always assume the best in people, but still it was his default setting. She just shakes her head.

“Fred bought me present.” Jace says loudly. ”A car. A blue car.”

“Can I see it?” Jughead asks.

“Yes!” Jace yells loudly, far too close to Betty’s ear and then he dumps the phone in her lap and runs off in search of the car. 

Betty picks up the phone and blows Jughead a kiss. Feeling a little silly as she does it, but grateful when a smile crosses his face. He seems so far away.

“How’s Fred?” Jughead asks.

“Great. But tired. He’s sleeping now.” Betty knows Jughead’s concerned by Fred’s health, but Betty thinks it’s normal. Part of getting older is slowing down. “He should be anyways. Archie is coming over for dinner and I’m sure he will keep Fred up late.”

Jughead nods. “What about Toni and Veronica?” 

“They’re coming by in an hour to go to the park with Jace and I. Toni has a photo shoot tonight.” 

“Good. Are you planning to be this social the whole time I’m gone?”

“Maybe. Lucas, Lila and the kids are coming over tomorrow for brunch.”

“What am I even doing out west?” Jughead groans. He looks tired again and Betty wishes she could re-energize him somehow.

“You’re being a famous author.” 

Jughead laughs and rolls his eyes ”I’d much rather be back home with my family.” Betty knows what he means. When it’s her turn to go out and teach these things she always struggles, and that was before Jace. But she actually thinks this could be good for him, as hard as it is. 

Jace rushes back, grabs the cellphone from Betty and shows Jughead exactly how the car works. 

**1:30 PM PST**

Jughead’s trying to sleep, but it’s hard. In the hallway outside his room people are talking loudly. He can fall asleep, but the sleep only lasts for a few minutes before he wakes up with a start. It’s an awful cycle. 

He pushes himself out of bed, groggy. He doesn’t even check the mirror to see how bad his bed head is before pushing open the door to see who is making all the ruckus out there. He’s in for a surprise, when the door swings open he sees Connor Clark, one of his literary heroes, winner of the most recent Pulitzer prize chatting with Kevin, his former fellow student, and an established poet in his own right. 

Jughead’s mouth drops and any complaint he was about to make dries on his tongue. He loves everything Connor has ever written and even though he and Kevin have had their differences over the years, they’ve always been minor. He hasn’t seen him in ages and he’s happy to see him now. 

Kevin spots Jughead first, turning towards him, a pleased look on his face “Jughead, it’s been forever.” He then wraps Jughead in a surprisingly pleasant hug. 

“Kevin, it’s good to see you! I didn’t know you would be here. I didn’t see you on the roster.” Jughead’s a little confused by that. He’s been busy and a little absent minded these last few months, but surely he wouldn’t have missed something as obvious as that.

“I’m not. My new partner, Mark Simcoe, is here teaching non-fiction.” 

“Oh, that’s great. Betty’s worked with Mark a couple times for The New Yorker. She didn’t mention you guys were partners.” 

Kevin smiles, “It’s very recent. She probably doesn’t know. Where is Betty?” Kevin says. Jughead accidently left the door to his room open, and it’s clear that she’s not in there.

“She couldn’t make it. She’s at home with our son.”

Kevin’s face fills with genuine warmth. They’re in the same friend groups after all, and he and Kay had actually become closer after grad school. Even if Betty hadn’t told him herself, he would know a little bit about their struggles.

“Oh, Jug, I didn’t know! That’s so great! Betty finally got...”

Jughead cuts him off with a severe look and a head shake “We adopted, he’s four.”

“Oh.” Kevin’s face falls, and Jughead’s worried he sent the wrong message. He’s really happy they adopted Jace after all. He just didn’t want to have to think about their former struggles to conceive anymore. 

“He’s wonderful. His name is Jace,” Jughead said, and then because he notices Conner shift awkwardly from foot to foot, he realizes that he’s accidently left the author out of the loop, so excited had he been to see a familiar face. 

Jughead turns to Connor and extends his hand, “Hi, I’m Jughead. A huge fan of your work.”

Conner shakes Jughead’s hand strongly. “That’s quite the name. I must say I’m not familiar with yours.” 

“He publishes under J.P. Jones. It’s much more professional.” Kevin offers up. “Jughead and I went to grad school together. His wife, Elizabeth Cooper was there too.” Since Betty still publishes under her maiden name, Jughead’s used to hearing it in this context.

Connors expression changes, it softens. The older man always looks severe and academic in author photos, but now he looks warm and approachable. “I read your first book. It was raw but great.”

“Thanks,” Jughead says. “But it almost feels like I didn’t write it after all this time.” 

Connors smile grows bigger, “I know what you mean. I feel that way about my early work.” Jughead’s relieved to hear that. He’d rarely been brave enough to even say something like that out loud before. “Did you actually live it?”

“Yes,” Jughead says, although that too has felt less and less true. Toni is the only part of that past life that is still in his current one. He hears from Sweet Pea or Fangs every couple of years, but those exchanges always feel superficial. 

His father passed away a year ago, and Jughead kept waiting to be gutted with guilt, or some other feeling, sadness maybe, but nothing like that happened. They hadn’t been in touch in years, it was his father’s choice more than his. 

“Do you ever miss that life?” Connor asks, and Jughead is reminded again that for the first few years of his career, Connor was a cop as well as a writer. He wonders if that’s why the man was so interested in what was essentially the memoir of a criminal. 

“Never. My best friend in the book is still my best friend, outside of my wife, but other than that everything is changed for the better.”

Kevin chuckles, “When you and Betty first started dating, I never would have predicted that you would marry, and yet it seems to suit both of you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you seemed attracted to any female student, and she seemed completely disinterested in any one who went there at all.” 

Sometimes Jughead forgets that that is how it all started. Not suspicious at all, whereas now it felt inevitable that they would be together and stay together. “Now we’ve been married for a decade almost.”

“Shut up,” Kevin says. “It can’t possibly be that long.” Jughead can see him actually do the mental math in his head. “Shit, it is. I’m old.”

Connor actually laughs. “I’m seventy. You guys can’t possibly be old because I still feel young.”

“Having a four year old has aged me incredibly,” Jughead says. “If I have to listen to Baby Shark Halloween one more time, I might actually die.”

Kevin and Connor just look confused. Jughead decides that the reference must only work if you have kids of a certain age. 

“Do you have kids?” Jughead asks Connor. He realizes that he knows very little about his personal life, because unlike him Connor has never written anything autobiographical in nature, at least not explicitly so. 

“Yes. Four. They’re about your age I expect, and they all have kids of their own.” Connor says. “And two of them were adopted when they were toddlers. So I know it can be a whole different thing in the beginning.”

Jughead nods. It’s true. He knows that having your own kid is hard for all sorts of different reasons. Pregnancy can be terrible, and newborns lead to sleep deprivation, and the terrible twos can be traumatizing. 

But with Jace they have a four year old who has already experienced trauma, clearly from the way he behaves, but has no way of communicating what that trauma was to them, and probably doesn’t even know what it is himself. They are left with a kind of unsolvable mystery.

Usually in these situations social services knows more, but Jace was found malnourished at a midtown mall at three. Even his age is kind of a guess. His birthday is arbitrary. He might actually be five or even three. 

“Yes. We don’t know any other way. But my wife was adopted later in life, so we know what a big difference it can make. How those bonds can still form even when your older.”

Connor nods. “I’d say that my relationship with all my kids are equal now. That it doesn’t make a hint of difference, if they have my blood or not.”

“Jace is definitely my son.” Jughead says. It’s true, and he thinks part of it is that the people he’s closest to in this world, his chosen family, never had blood ties with him in the first place. 

“I’ve got to go to bed now.” Connor says. “I flew from Vermont on a red eye and I’m regretting it.” 

“Have a good nap.” Jughead replies and Kevin says the same thing at the same time.

Jughead wishes he could go nap now too, but he no longer feels like sleeping. “Do you want to go get coffee?” Jughead asks.

“Absolutely.” Kevin says. “As long as we can go off campus. The cup of coffee I had earlier was awful.”

Jughead had found the coffee earlier fine, but he liked the idea of getting off campus and getting a feel for the neighborhood. He’d been to Portland before, but never for much more than a quick stop at Powell’s.

“Sure. I’m just going to go put some shoes on.” 

“You might want to put a comb through your hair too. What were you doing before you came out here? Sleeping?”

Jughead shrugs. “Yes.”

Kevin looks a little embarrassed. “Sorry.“

Jug shrugs. “It was a good surprise to see you.” and then he ducks back into the room to grab his shoes and send Betty a quick text about Kevin. 

**4:30 PM EST**

Jace is shoveling sand in the sand box. He’s got a pink shovel and a look of determination on his face.

“Today I’m going to get to the bottom of it Betts,” he says very seriously as he digs a little deeper.

Veronica laughs and Toni takes another picture. Betty thinks that Jace might be one of the most photographed kids in the world because of Toni. She’s never been a big documenter of day to day life until Jace came along, but she swears that he’s the cutest kid she’s ever seen. 

Still Betty can’t really complain. They have so many wonderful pictures of Jace because of Toni. 

Another mother comes over to Toni and asks “Is this your child? He’s beautiful.” 

Toni shakes her head. “I’m just the aunt. It’s my sister-in-law’s kid,” she gestures in Betty’s direction and Betty gives a polite wave. 

Betty knows this stranger understands the comment differently than Toni intends it. She assumes Betty is the biological mother, and that Jace’s father is Toni’s biological brother, rather than family by choice. 

When Betty and Jughead go out alone with Jace, it’s clear they adopted him. It’s not something they have to reveal to people. 

He’s African American, and Betty knows people have strong feelings about him being raised by a white couple, hell she has complicated feelings about it, but she also knows that if they didn’t adopt him, he likely would have remained in the system till he was 18. Her feelings about that are completely straight-forward.

The woman smiles and follows her own little girl, a ringleted red head, out of the park. 

“How’s work going?” Betty asks Veronica. 

“Same old, same old.” Veronica sighs. “Each year I think I’m going to have more freedom at work and actually be able to design clothes I want to wear and each year it ends up being a bait and switch.”

“What happened this time?”

“They promoted someone else, after promising me the position. I just found out yesterday.”

“Shit. I’m sorry.” She remembers last year, where it seemed like Veronica was finally actually moving up, only for the recession to make that impossible. 

Veronica shrugs. “It’s fine. I’m thinking of a change of pace.”

“A new job?”

Toni turns around, away from Jace for a second and flashes Betty a smile “A child.”

Joy runs through Betty. A year ago it would have been more complicated. There would be jealousy as well, but now it was pure happiness.

“Guys! That’s great!”

Veronica sends Toni a scolding look, but her mouth is still smiling so it’s hard to take it too seriously. “You weren't supposed to tell them till Jughead got back.”

“I couldn't resist” Toni says with a smile. “We can call him right after this. But I can’t keep the secret any longer! Veronica’s pregnant!”

Betty can’t help herself, her palm moves instinctively towards Veronica’s stomach, but before she touches it, she stops herself and pulls away. “I’m sorry.”

Veronica shakes her head and says “Don’t be! Although there’s nothing to feel right now. We are only at the eleven week mark.”

“I am so happy for you guys!” Betty notices that Jace is looking at her with an expression of confusion on his face. She gets up and walks over to him and says “Auntie Veronica is pregnant. You’re going to have cousin.”

“Cool.” Jace says, looking back at the sand. “Boy or girl.”

“We don’t know yet,” Toni says.

“I only want a boy cousin,” Jace says very matter-of-factly. Betty tries and fails not to laugh. 

“That’s just not how the world works,” Betty says. 

“Oh,” Jace says. He abandons the shovel, and walks over to the swings and then before he gets too far he turns back around and says “Push please?”

“I want to do it,” Veronica says getting off the bench and walking over with him. The swings are at the other end of the playground, but instead of going over to them, Betty sits back down on the bench, this time Toni joins her.

“I am so happy for you,” Betty says, offering Toni a seated hug.

“Thanks. I hope it wasn’t hard for you to hear.”

“No. Not at all. It was different before we had Jace. When we were stressed and trying so hard. I still would have been happy for you, but I would have cried once I got home. Now though, I’m just so glad Jace has a cousin.”

“Even if it’s a girl,” Toni jokes.

“Especially,” Betty says. 

“I have something else to tell you too.”

“What?” Betty asks. 

“Archie’s the sperm donor.” A nervous look crosses Toni’s face when she says it.

Betty is so grateful she’s not drinking or eating anything at that moment, because as it is, it is hard to breath. “What? Why?”

Toni shrugs “We didn’t want to pay an organization a lot of money for a stranger’s sperm. We didn’t want them to have a bunch of probable half siblings out there. We wanted to know who their dad really was, not some name in a book.”

It’s weird for Betty, because she wants to just be happy about all this, but she feels strangely conflicted. She loves everyone involved with the making of the child, but Archie’s her brother, and he’s never told her he wanted kids. He never mentioned anything like this. 

“Will Archie be involved in raising the baby?” Betty asks. 

“Of course. As an uncle, and the baby will always know who he is.”

“But won’t that be confusing?” Betty says. 

“To whom?” Toni asks. Anyone who didn’t know Toni well would think she’s getting mad, but Betty knows Toni better than almost anyone in the world. She knows Toni’s getting defensive because she’s unsure of all this too. It’s why she’s told Betty first. This is the sort of thing Jughead was known to react poorly to.

“To the baby. To Archie. Even to you guys.” 

“Maybe.” Toni says. “But Archie’s family too. He has good genes, he’s a good person. He offered, once a long time ago, when Veronica and I were on a break and I told him how badly I wanted a baby.”

Knowing that helps calm Betty down a little. It’s different if Archie volunteered, if this was so long in the making. Still it worries her. 

Archie is her brother, but he couldn’t be more different than her in terms of relationships. Betty loved commitment or solitude, Archie wanted neither. He had Betty, Jughead, and Toni to ground him as friends, but Betty can’t even remember the last time she met a girl he dated, even by accident, though he was always sleeping with someone. 

She’s worried he hasn’t thought this through in terms of having a kid with one of his best friends and their actual wife. Still she knows she has no other choice than to support this.

“Do you want me to tell Jughead?” Betty asks Toni. 

“Please,” Toni says, taking both of Betty’s hands. “I think he will take it so much better coming from you. Plus I don’t need his judgment right now.”

Betty nods. “Fair enough.” 

**5:15 PM PST**

Jughead really doesn’t want to go to the happy hour, but it’s not an optional part of the workshop, at least not on the first day, where all the drinks are free and all the teachers need to talk to their students and each other. 

He’s not really a drinker, and more significantly his wife just told him that for all intents and purposes her brother got his sister’s wife pregnant. On purpose and with a turkey baster, but still. 

While Jughead can imagine Toni being a mom, and Veronica too. He thinks they’ll be spectacular, but where Archie fits into all this confuses him. Will he just be the fun uncle, the optional dad, the distant sperm donor?

It doesn’t help that Jughead’s heard this news update after getting very little sleep and having a long day. The coffee with Kevin was good, but he never really got to have a nap, so he feels more than a little disorientated. 

Still he’d rather be here than in Betty’s position. She had to digest the news first hand, share it with him, and now talk about it with Archie. All without Fred finding out. Jughead doesn’t envy her. 

Jughead takes a deep breath of fresh air and walks into the hall where the happy hour is taking place. There’s food spread out on a long table, so at least he’s glad for that and a long row of bartenders serving drinks.

“Hello.” Jughead turns and sees Dan again. “I’m glad you can make it. How did your first meeting with your class go?”

“Well enough,” Jughead says with a shrug. “This is quite the party.” Jughead meant to hide the ambivalence in his voice better, but somehow he fails. 

Still Dan keeps smiling and doesn’t seem to care “Thank you. It’s part of our tradition of being here. What are you drinking?”

“Nothing.”

“Please, let me get you something. I have some excellent scotch hidden back there.”

“That sounds great. Thank you.”

Jughead particularly dislikes scotch, but he’s learned long ago that the best way to avoid a bunch of drinks being thrust on you repeatedly is to say yes to one you really don’t like and hold it all night long.

Dan goes over to the bartender and then returns to Jughead with the drink. But before Dan can start talking again, a women Jughead doesn’t know comes over to both of them.

She’s a little younger than Jughead, but not much. With long brown hair and a very visible chest due to an uncomfortably low neckline.

“Hi,” she says to both of them “I’m Jane. I heard you organized the conference,” she turns towards Dan, “so thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Dan says.

After giving him a quick, forced smile, she surprisingly turns away from Dan so dramatically that her back actually faces him, as she makes her intentions very clear. “And you’re my idol, Jughead Jones. I desperately wanted to be in your class but it filled up too fast.”

Behind Jane’s back Dan gives an awkward smile and a shrug as if to convey that he wanted to help but he couldn’t. He then walks off.

Jughead grits his teeth. He’s experienced moments like this before. He’s sure Dan has too considering how fast he’s leaving. All he could do was be thankful that Jane wasn’t in his class.

“Oh, thank you,” Jughead says. 

“Your books changed my life,” Jane says, without mentioning any of them by name. “And you’re so attractive. Can I say that?” Jane laughs then. It’s a practiced laugh, and everything about it bothers Jughead.

“You can. But I don’t have to like it,” Jughead says. “Excuse me.” He knows that if Betty were here, he wouldn’t be nearly so bold, so rude really, she kept that part of him in check, but this had been a long day. 

He walks past Jane, her expression caught between a smile and a grimace.

**8:30 PM EST**

Betty places one hand on Jace’s forehead and the other on his lower back and then she sings “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as you're living, my baby you’ll be.” It’s a song Robert Munch wrote a long time ago. One Betty didn’t grow up with, but Archie did. 

The song was part of a much longer book that Betty would love to dismiss because it was cliché and trite, but it always made her feel deep feelings when she read it.

But more importantly, Jace connected with it. It was his favorite book, and the song itself always calmed him down.

“I love you, Betts,” he says. 

Betty can’t see him well. The lights are off but he’s partially visible because his star projector is on and broadcasting blue stars onto the ceiling above them.

“I love you too. So does Jug,” Betty says. She wants Jace to call them mom and dad but she will never push him. 

“I know.” That simple sentence has Betty on the verge of tears. 

“How did I become your baby if you didn’t have me from the beginning?”

Betty’s grateful for the dark and she hopes her voice won’t break. She says, “We chose you, and that made all the difference.” 

Jace becomes quiet and it takes Betty a moment to realize that he’s actually fallen asleep. It’s rare for him to do that while she’s still in the room. Usually he ends up talking to himself for a while beforehand. 

She should go straight out there and see how Fred and Archie are doing, but she’s so tired and she’s not sure what she’ll walk into, so instead she just sits there for a while, her hand on Jace’s back, as she watches the projected stars rotate across the ceiling above her.

It’s been a good night, but she feels the conversation she has to have with Archie hanging over her like an anvil in a Looney Tunes cartoon.

**8:55 PM PST**

Mark, Kevin’s boyfriend, reads the last sentence of his essay on single fatherhood and Jughead finds himself wiping tears from his eyes. He’d like to say it’s exhaustion or allergies, but really fatherhood has changed him. 

Kevin who’s sitting to Jughead’s left starts clapping and the whole outdoor amphitheater including Jughead, joins in. When Mark sits back down Jughead leans over Kevin and says, “It was spectacular.”

Really all three of the readers were, all three brought something different to the table. Caleb, the fiction writer, someone Jughead knew a little from literary circles and mutual friends, read a hilarious piece about ghosts, and Sarah, the poet had been angry in just the right ways. 

Jughead could see now why so many of the students and so many of the teachers returned here year after year. 

Dan runs up to the stage and announces that there are even more free drinks in the hall and encourages everyone to go there. 

Jughead really is done now. Any ounce of socialization left in his body was taken over dinner, which involved four of the other instructors, all people Jughead knew of and had mutual friends with. 

Back in New York even before Jace, Jughead was used to having a pretty simple social life. Family dinner at least once a week with Veronica, Toni, and Archie, followed up by Sunday brunch with Lucas’s brood, and the occasional coffee with Matt. 

He had other friends, people that he liked and knew fairly well, but he usually saw them in the context of readings, or other literary gatherings. But the kind of constant contact workshops like this involved, often overwhelmed him. 

Jughead swears that tomorrow he’ll do better, but for the sake of his sanity, he thinks he better sneak off tonight. 

**12:04 AM EST**

Fred heads to bed at 11:30 with a sleepy nod and a smile on his face. Betty doesn’t dare broach the subject of the baby then though. What if Fred ducks out of the guest bedroom to ask for a spare toothbrush at the wrong moment. 

Instead she lets Archie chat about work, until she can actually hear Fred snoring in another room. 

Archie's excitedly talking about an act he just signed when Betty interrupts him, “Archie, Toni told me about the baby.”

Archie’s whole demeanor shifts and his face goes bright red. Betty’s not sure if it’s with embarrassment or anger or a mix of both.

“Why didn’t she warn me?” he says.

“I don’t know,” Betty says. “But as sweet as what I think your trying to do is. I’m not sure you’ve thought it through.”

Archie turns and Betty sees the boy who became her brother at nine. She never expected to see him look so relieved at her calling him out, “I didn’t. I don’t know what to do. It’s why I didn’t tell you or dad.”

“Ok,” Betty says, taking his hands in hers. “You’ll be OK.”

Then, when she almost couldn’t be more shocked, he lets go of her hands settles his head against her shoulders and starts crying. Not loudly, but intensely. After a few minutes she hears him say into her shoulder, “I think I want to be a dad.”

Betty wishes she could reassure him, tell him everything was going to work out, but she can’t do that honestly, so instead she thinks all the positive thoughts she can summon and she rubs his back. 

A minute later he sits up, and Betty grabs a tissue box from the kitchen. Archie turns away from her as he cleans up and when he turns back towards her he looks surprisingly fine, surprisingly put together, like the mid-level music executive and ladies’ man that he is.

“What do you think Toni will say when I tell her I want to be a part of this kids life?” Archie says.

“I don’t think it’s Toni you have to worry about, but I think Veronica will understand as long as you’re very clear.”

Archie nods, “Should I call them right now? They might still be up.”

Betty thinks that’s a terrible idea, but very Archie. She shakes her head. “Sleep on it. But remember you gave this to them with no strings attached. They're in control here. You can tell them what you want but they don't have to give it to you.” Even though privately she thinks they will.

**2:23 AM EST**

Jughead’s grainy on the other end of the video chat. They’ve been talking for over half an hour now, and Betty desperately needs to get to sleep, Jace often wakes up as early as six, yet she finds it so hard to end the call. 

“I can’t believe Archie is going to be a dad,” Jughead repeats for the seventh time. 

Betty doesn’t even bother agreeing verbally this time, she just sort of shakes her head.

“You’re not jealous are you?” Betty says. After all, Jughead could be a father. All the fertility issues were on her end, the specialists had minced no words about that.

“We have a kid, Betts. A spectacular one.”

“Ok.” Betty concedes. She trusts him to be honest, but she knows it’s different for her. Because she was adopted, she knew the power of that in a different way than he did.

Jughead moves his phone closer to his face so she can really see his eyes. “Believe me Betty, I was raised by my father, sort-of, biology has nothing on chosen family.”

“Ok,” she says.

“Although I will confess that I’m looking forward to the baby snuggles.”

“Of course,” Betty says. She remembers how he was with Lucas and Lila’s kids. Always wanting to rock the baby or even wear the baby carrier. Babies have a bigger pull for him then for her. Give her a kid any day.

“And Fred will finally get to use those onesies he bought a decade ago.” 

“Oh no! I’m sure there all outdated now.”

“Betts, the one with the slogan there's a nap for thst, is timeless.”

Betty laughs. “I can’t believe you found his onesie stash while you were helping him clean the attic.”

“He was appropriately embarrassed. Although when Jace is in his thirties I plan to have a onesie stash of my own.”

Betty covers her face with her hands. “You’re so ridiculous.”

Jughead pretends to look hurt before saying, “But you love me anyways?”

“I love you in every way,” she says. “But I’m still not going to sleep with you on video chat all night.”

“Please?” He pouts and she feels a little more of her resolve give way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Always grateful for feedback!


	3. A Year Later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a terrible week, and I was trying to exercise self control and post this next week when I had planned to, but right now my self control is limited. 
> 
> Besides I really hope this chapter will make at least one persons life better!
> 
> A huge thanks is owed to KittiLee for making this so much better! My favorite sentence in this I only added because of her.
> 
> Also the fact that i'm posting this during Pride month is a very happy accident.

**6:20am**

Betty’s sipping coffee in the green room on the set of The Morning Show with Kari and Tom. It’s not a show she watches, because 1) she doesn’t watch morning shows, or much tv period, and 2) it’s too conservative, at least that’s what Veronica told her, and Betty trusts Veronica.

Still, her agent booked this show, so she finds herself on it. Appearing on any of these shows makes her uncomfortable, but they come with the territory. Just another unexpected part of being an author. 

At least the room she’s in now is quiet, just a mirror and a sofa, no one else to bother her. After the flurry of hair and makeup just moments before, this feels like a reprieve.

Her hair is up in a bun, nothing particularly special, but her face looks and feels caked with makeup. She’s seen how she looks on camera like this though. It’s a polished, approachable look that both her agent and publisher agree on. At least she gets to wear her favorite pair of jeans and a cream colored leather jacket that she wouldn’t have splurged on otherwise.

Still, Betty feels overwhelmed, her book Family/History is at the top of the New York Times Bestseller list for the fourth week in a row, and the attention that had suddenly been focused on her because of the book was uncomfortable to say the least. 

Last Saturday, while she, Jughead and Jace were out at their favorite coffee shop, indulging in some donuts and caffeine (steamed milk for Jace), two people had approached her out of the blue, asking for autographs. 

In the past, this had sometimes happened to Jughead, but the one degree of separation made it manageable. She could always reach across the table and give his arm a sympathetic squeeze. Now he was the one doing that to her. 

Her agent promised her that after this week of really focusing on promoting the book, in person, on TV and the radio, she could take a week off, but only if she said yes to every opportunity that was given her during this week. 

At least this was her last commitment. She’d made it through the gauntlet. After this she could have a lazy Saturday, followed by a week of rest.

Her phone beeps and she looks at it to see Jughead’s text - **Can’t wait to see you on TV.**

She has no idea how much time she does or doesn’t have before she goes on, so she types back quickly - **Wouldn’t you much rather see me in bed?**

 **I did, two hours ago** \- Jughead follows up that text with a selfie of himself, and just visible, nestled into his chest, Jace’s curly brown hair - **We miss you already.**

Betty wishes she was there with both of them. Jughead, who it now felt like she’d shared a whole lifetime with, and Jace who was just now entering his second year with them, his fifth in this world. 

When Jace had first come to them, he never would have cuddled, or even laid on the same bed as Jughead. But he trusted them both now, proudly introduced them as his parents even though they looked nothing like him. He didn’t call them mom or dad yet, though. Betty didn’t know if he ever would.

Betty felt a bond with Jace that she could not imagine having with a biological child, not that she would ever have the opportunity to find out if that was true or not. Sometimes when she and Jughead are in the park with Jace a child will run past that looks like a combination of the two of them. Messy curls in a ponytail, or a certain kind of nose, and Betty will feel, once again a pang of loss. A sadness that their love didn’t help make anyone.

But now she sees the way their love informs Jace. The way it has helped changed him from nervous and sullen, to thoughtful and joyous.

During the first year, when Jace had gotten in trouble at daycare and acted out so badly that taking him on a plane was unimaginable, Betty had been the more forgiving one. But Jughead’s patience had been key too. He’d never once lost his temper with Jace, and slowly that stranger they’d met for the first time in a social workers office, the one who had kicked Jughead in the shins, had become an essential part of their family. 

There’s a knock on the door that interrupts her thoughts, and before Betty can say anything a PA sticks her head in and directs Betty to follow her to the wings of the stage.

From where the PA positions her, she can see the set and can even the audience. When Kari welcomes Betty to the stage, the audience gives her a warm round of applause as she walks carefully over to the chairs they have set up for the interview. 

Tom and Kari, both of whom Betty had met briefly earlier, greet her. Kari with a hug, Tom with an eye twitch that makes Betty nervous. 

Kari raves about the book in a way that makes it clear that she hasn’t read it, but still Betty smiles and nods. Then Tom asks Betty why she wrote the book in the first place.

Betty smiles politely. This is the question she’s been asked the most before, so she recites her well-practiced answer. “I am adopted, and I have a wonderful adoptive family that I am close to. Also, while I was writing the book, my husband and I adopted a child of our own.”

A picture of Jace playing soccer, a picture Jace himself had approved, flashed behind them to show the audience what he looked like. Betty could almost hear the smiles. 

“But the book is not just about that, it’s about other ways, legal ways like marriage, but also the largely informal ways we make families out of friends. My husband has a sister by choice, and when she landed in the hospital, years ago before she was married, she had no one who could visit her because of paperwork. It was a nightmare, but it started me down this path.”

“So you’re a strong believer in marriage?” Tom asks.

Betty is a strong believer in marriage at least in terms of her own life. She knows it isn’t for everyone. Marriage has helped her feel safer, more secure. She’s always liked the way commitment feels, and she likes having paperwork to back it up.

“For myself I am. For people who want it. It’s not for everyone.”

Tom gets a nasty glint in his eye before saying, “But you have an open marriage, correct?”

Betty’s not sure where Tom got such a ridiculous idea. She understands the premise, she knows people for whom they seem to work for and others where they don’t, but for her, commitment to one person was something that always came well before sex, never mind marriage.

“Excuse me?” Betty says. Beside Tom, she notices Kari blush with embarrassment.

“You identify as bisexual, right?” 

Betty doesn’t know what that has to do with any of it. Her sexuality isn’t something she talks about much anymore. It’s no one’s business, and everyone sees her with a husband and a child and presumes one thing, so what if it’s wrong, if it’s not the whole her. She doesn’t have to reveal anything. 

But early on this press tour she was at the 92nd street Y giving a talk. Sexuality came up, and she talked about it in the context of her life. It wasn’t something to hide either. She wasn’t in the closet at 14 and she certainly wasn’t going to step back there now. 

“I don’t understand why that’s relevant?”

Tom actually stands up. “I don’t understand how you can identify as bisexual and only be married to a man.” 

The Betty from ten years ago would have just left right then and there. But current Betty takes a deep breath and says, “That’s just not how it works in the slightest. Look, two of my best friends, both females, are married to each-other, but they both identify as bisexuals. Would you call them lesbians?”

“No, but that’s diff…”

Betty cuts him off “No, it’s a double standard. Look if you’re a heterosexual married person, aren't you still aware that there are other people out there that you would hypothetically be attracted to, did you not belong heart and soul to that one person?”

Tom doesn’t say anything. His jaw is slack. Kari offers up a smile. “That’s a good point, Betty.” Kari then shifts the topic to the process of adopting.

Betty’s sure she comes across as closed off and on guard during the rest of the interview, but she could care less. 

The rest of the time they’re filming, Tom stays silent and looks unhappy, but Betty doesn’t care. She hates the implication that she’s claiming to be something that she isn’t, as much as she hates the implication that her sexuality somehow makes her less loyal, less trustworthy. 

By the time the audience claps, Betty’s ready to race off that stage. Instead, she shakes both the host hands, looking Tom directly in the eyes as she does so, even though he refuses to meet her gaze. 

**7:20 AM**

Jughead didn’t mean to fall asleep before Betty shows up on screen, but he’d stayed up too late last night with Archie, Toni, Veronica, and baby Mia, to keep his eyes open.

An indeterminate amount of time later he is being shaken awake by a wide eyed Jace, “What’s an open marriage?”

Jughead sits up with a start and looks at the TV. Tom and Kari are still on, but they’re talking about viral videos now, not interviewing anyone.

“What?” Jughead asks Jace. He still feels a little disoriented. 

“Betty was on TV.” 

Shit, Jughead thinks, he had missed it. “Yes,” Jughead says. “I wanted to see it, but I fell asleep. You must have watched it?”

“Yes. What’s an open marriage?”

Where was this coming from, Jughead wondered. At that moment his phone buzzes and he grabs it from the bedside table. The text was from Veronica and it read **\- Congratulate Betty on getting #bisexualerasure and #notanopenmarriage trending on Twittter**.

Jughead was completely awake now, but also completely confused. What was all this about? His phone buzzes again, this time the text was from Toni **#bestsisterinlawbetty.**

“Jug, what’s an open marriage?” Jace says. 

Another text pings through on Jughead’s phone from Toni - **Could that Tom guy get any worse? Is Betty ok?**

Normally Jughead would give Jace a thoughtful, although probably too complicated for a five year old, answer. Instead, Jughead is the one who really needs answers.

“Do you want pop tarts for breakfast?” Jughead suggests. It’s a terrible trick but he really needs a couple moments alone with the internet to figure this out. Betty would never feed Jace anything as sugar filled and artificial as pop-tarts, but Jughead kept some stashed above the fridge for his own occasional cravings.

Jace immediately forgot all about the open marriage question. Instead he shouts, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Jughead leads Jace into the kitchen, rips open the pop tart packaging and offers them to Jace cold. Jace stuffs one in his mouth and holds the other tightly in his left hand. 

Jughead finds his laptop on the sofa. Opening it up he goes immeditly to Twitter. He doesn’t use it, but he does have it (he pays someone to manage it for him). On the top of his twitter feed was Archie Andrews verified account with the tweet "Tom is a motherfucking asshole. I stand by Elizabeth Cooper. #Bettydeservesbetter #tomiscancelled".

Only then does Jughead see that Archie’s tweet is in fact a re-tweet, and he sees that the tweet he’s responding to is by Tom Jones. The pieces start clicking into place in Jughead’s mind and he is regretting even more that he missed Betty’s appearance on the morning show, because this all seems to be adding up to something bad. 

Jughead clicks on Tom’s original tweet and reads "Some women can’t decide if they’re bisexual or they’re a faithful wife. #elizabethcooper”

That’s when Jughead goes to YouTube and discovers to his relief that someone has already uploaded the clip. Jace watches it with him. Jughead can’t remember ever watching anything that’s made him so angry before. 

Betty handles herself wonderfully, Tom comes off as annoying, but chastised. It’s the idea that after all that, Tom went online and tweeted about Betty, as if he deserved to have the last word. It just makes Jughead furious. 

Jughead makes the mistake of scrolling down to the comments on the YouTube video. Everyone is hiding behind ridiculous screen names and saying things like “She’s married to a man, she’s straight but pretending otherwise for the Queer support.” and “There is no such thing as a bisexual.”

He forces himself to click away from the comments. Nothing good will come from reading them. Nothing good will come from responding to them. Still, he should say something about the situation.

Jughead starts composing his very first tweet, and then re-composing it. The whole time his cell phone is lighting up with texts but he doesn’t care. Thankfully, on his fiftieth drafted tweet Betty comes through the door with a pissed off look on her face. 

“Have you posted anything on twitter?” Betty asks. 

“No.” Jughead says, feeling a little bewildered. 

“Good.” Betty exhales. “We’re going out to breakfast.”

“Yay!” Jace screams, running at Betty and tackling her around the legs. “I love you.”

“Ok,” Jughead says. After all these years together, Betty can still surprise him after all. Even mad she looks beautiful, like a warrior wearing the wrong clothes. “Is this a good time to mention that I didn’t actually see the show at first. I slept through it, then had to catch up on youtube.”

A soft look comes over Betty’s face. “Oh. That’s good.”

“What’s an open marriage, Betty?” Jace asks. 

Betty squats down in front of him and says “It’s when two people are married but still date other people. But everyone knows about the dating and everyone’s ok with it. Your dad and I are not in one.” 

“Why did that guy think you were?” Jace asks. His hand is resting on Betty’s knee. 

“Because I like both men and women. But I only love your dad romantically.” 

Jace nods, “I know. It’s obvious.”

Jughead chuckles. “So breakfast?”

Betty stands and Jace takes her hand and they all exit the condo together. 

 

**2:00 PM**

 

Betty’s rocking Mia in her arms, as Jace climbs a ladder up onto the play structure. Jughead is talking to Toni over by the slides. Even though it’s Saturday, Veronica’s at work, she’s putting the finishing touches on her first clothing collection.

Archie is glaring at his phone screen. He keeps making angry noises about what he sees on it, even though Betty’s made it abundantly clear that she doesn’t want to talk about it. She talked to her agent on the way back from the filming, and they are both in agreement that what is done is done. Jughead’s managed to honor that by not talking about it. But Toni, Veronica and Archie are struggling.

“I can’t believe you’re not more mad about this,” Archie says, shaking his head. 

“There are many worse things going on in the world right now than what happened this morning,” Betty says with a smile. Mia’s eyelids flutter closed. Betty will probably never have a child this small of her own, but she can’t stop herself from wanting it entirely. She loves the way Mia’s warm body feels pressed up against hers. 

“I know, but…”

Betty cuts him off with a glare. She knows Archie too well. There was a reason they ended up together in the principal’s office so many times in elementary school. He loves defending her. He took the whole big brother thing too seriously for someone who was only three months older.

“Look. I know you want to punch Tom in the throat or something, but honestly my life will be easier and better if we just drop it. I said what I said, and he said what he said, and now we can let it be. Now I’d much rather talk about Mia. Toni says she’s been sleeping better?”

Archie nods. “I’m spending three nights a week at Toni and Veronica’s house. I’m able to help that way. I sleep in Mia’s room and I can get her if she wakes up. At first she was so pissed that it was me and not Veronica or Toni, but she seems to have gotten over that. 

“Good.” Mia stirs in Betty’s arms, so she rocks slightly. “She seems to be less fussy generally.”

“She is.” Archie says with a nod. “I think she’s over the colicky stage.”

“I think it’s called the period of purple crying now.”

Archie laughs, “Whatever! I just can’t wait till she starts to crawl.”

“You’re saying that now. She’s going to be into everything.”

Archie reaches out and strokes Mia’s cheek slightly “I want her into everything.” His voice is soft. 

Betty had been so nervous about him becoming a father this way. He’d volunteered to be Toni and Veronica’s sperm donor in such a casual way, that he hadn’t even thought about his role in the baby’s life, and neither had they. 

Betty was worried that his desire to be more involved in the Mia’s life would cause problems, but so far it had only helped. Veronica and Toni seemed to really appreciate having the extra help, and Archie seemed to be willing to do what needed to be done.

“I’m so glad this worked out,” Betty says. She knows she doesn’t have to spell out what to Archie.

He smiles, the same smile he’s had his whole life. “We’re doing it again actually. Toni’s trying to get pregnant this time.”

“Arch!” Betty says. “Already?” The kids will be so close together age wise if turkey basting round two ends up working out. There’s a tinge of jealousy in Betty’s gut, but it’s just a tinge.

“Yes. We want the kids to be close,” Archie says. “And I’m going to be involved from the start this time, doctors appointment at all.”

“Is all this putting a cramp on your dating life?” Betty asks. She doesn’t want to know details, but she can’t help but be a little curious. Archie’s never been involved in a relationship for more than a month or two, but he was always seeing someone, and then usually a little while later someone else.

“Yeah,” Archie says with a shrug. “I just don’t tell them about Mia. I’m still free four nights a week.”

“And you take advantage of all four?” Betty arcs an eyebrow.

“I try,” Archie says with a smirk. 

Betty glances to the slides, but Jace isn’t there anymore. He and Jughead are over on the teeter totter. He and Jughead are laughing loudly, while Toni takes photos. When Betty glances back at Archie, his teeth are gritted and he’s focused on his phone.

“Archie, stop looking at that,” Betty scolds.

“Someone just called you a whore on twitter,” Archie says.

“Anyone I know?” Betty says, raising an eyebrow. Archie shakes his head. “Then I couldn’t care less.”

 **3:00 PM**

Jughead knows Betty and Jace are tired. They keep passing the same yawn back and forth. Jughead gets them to lay down on the bed with him and snuggle. Jace asks to watch something, but he’s too exhausted to protest when Betty says no.

Instead Jughead asks if they want to hear a story. Betty’s head is resting on Jughead’s chest and Jace has an arm flung over Betty’s stomach. 

“Yes,” Jace says. “One about when you were little.”

Jace got this idea from school, from other kids talking to their parents. But for Betty and Jughead it was less straight forward, their childhoods less easy to describe, less easy to even think about. 

Jughead takes a deep breath. “When I was really little, I met your aunt Toni for the first time in a park, did you know that?”

“No. What was she doing in the park?” 

“She was hiding,” Jughead says. He remembers how small and how scared she had looked wedged under the slide, only her eyes really visible. 

“From who?”

“Big kids.” Jughead remembered them too. Some older Serpent kids, ones Jughead had never gotten along with. Back then Toni hadn’t known them at all. She wasn’t born into the Serpents like he was. She was just a neighborhood kid. “They could be scary sometimes and loud.”

“Were you scary and loud?”

Not at that age, Jughead thought. “No. I was so quiet when I approached her, I got down on my hands and my knees and I made the silliest face. I stuck out my tongue and squinted my eyes.”

Jughead can tell by how heavy Betty’s head is on his chest, that she’s asleep. It’s no wonder. She had gotten up so early this morning. He was surprised Jace wasn’t asleep also.

“And what did Aunt Toni do?”

“She laughed.”

“Did she crawl out from under the slide.”

“Not at first. At first I had to crawl in with her.”

“Oh,” Jace says. “Can I go watch something now?”

Jughead would like to say no, but if they stay here and talk Betty will probably wake up.

“Sure. But we have to be quiet leaving.” Jughead gently moves Betty’s head off his chest, and Jace backs off the bed. 

Out in the living room, Jughead turns on some old Batman cartoons for Jace and then he opens his laptop. The draft of his twitter message is still up on the screen. He’s sure it’s terribly out of date now, hundreds of thousands of posts have been made between when he wrote this and now, but still he presses post. 

**4:35 PM**

Betty wakes groggy to a ringing phone. She answers it without thinking. Her fingers punching in the privacy code automatically.

“Hello,” she says.

On the other end of the line Fred’s voice says, “Hi. Do I need to get a Twitter account?”

Betty is suddenly very awake. She sits up. “What happened?”

“I ran into Mrs. Klump at the Piggly Wiggly and she said she saw something about your marriage on Twitter, and she wanted to know if you were ok. Are you OK?” 

“The thing about the TV host?” Betty says. She hadn’t bothered telling Fred about all this because she honestly hoped he wouldn’t hear about any of this. It’s not like it mattered in the scheme of things.. She was doing her best to forget about it. It would work better if everyone else left it alone.

“No. Jug posted something.” 

Betty puts the phone on speaker, pulls up twitter, searches Jughead Jones and there it is, on his official Twitter page. Most of his page is carefully curated by someone else, but right at the top is the tweet he must have posted - “Open Marriages are for other people. Yes, I’m married to a bisexual. If you think that’s a big deal, you’re wrong. If you think that makes her straight, you’re an idiot.” 

There is thankfully nothing technically wrong with it, aside from casually insulting anyone with a differing opinion than his. Betty’s sure he drafted a thousand different options before this one, but still she wishes he hasn’t posted it. It probably will only keep the conversation going longer.

“Jughead!” she yells.

“What’s going on?” Fred asks through the speaker. Betty had completely forgotten he was still on speaker phone.

“I saw the tweet Fred. It’s not a big deal. Everything is fine with Jug and me. I will call you later. I love you.”

“Good,” Fred says as Betty hangs up and Jughead comes into the room with a sheepish expression on his face.

“Sorry,” he says.

Betty tries to keep her expression stern as she says, “You should know better.”

He can see through her pretenses, he always can. He presses his lips against hers, she responds warmly with her own.

 

**6:00pm**

Jughead chops the chicken and Betty the vegetables. Underdog by Spoon is playing and Jace is doing a funny little dance with one of his stuffed animals near the sofa.

Sometimes Jughead wishes he could take a moment like this, his whole family together in one room, just sharing space, and freeze it forever. There is no way to preserve moments like this. No video recording can capture this feeling of contentment. 

Jughead throws the chicken in the pan, washes his hands, and then he comes up from behind Betty and wraps his arms around her waist. Her body lurches a little in surprise. “Jughead, be careful. I have a knife.”

“I know,” he says, planting a kiss at the very base of her neck.

“I can see that!” Jace shouts.

“Close your eyes,” Jughead says, and he throws a glance at Jace and sees that the boy has rather dramatically covered both his eyes with the palms of his hand. Jughead kisses Betty’s cheek this time. 

“Jug, I’m trying to chop here.” 

“Fine,” he says, playfully throwing his hands in the air. “I wouldn’t want to get between my girl and her knife. 

 

**8:00 PM**

Betty closes The Twits by Rohld Dahl in spite of Jace’s protest. “Please Betty just one more chapter!” 

“Tomorrow,” Betty says. Jace’s teacher is always complaining about Jace’s lack of concentration, yet for Betty he’ll lie still and listen to the right book for hours. It confuses her to no end. 

“Could Jug read me the next chapter?” Jace pleads.

Betty shakes her head. “Nope. His night is tomorrow.” 

“Betty, can I have a brother?”

That simple sentence is at the heart of everything Betty has been thinking about lately. How they are a family already, but she wants Jace to have what she has with Archie. 

“What about a sister?” Betty teases.

“Maybe. But I’d prefer a brother. You could choose a boy, right?”

“What do you mean?” Betty says, lying down beside him in the bed, so her head was next to him. 

“I mean you chose me, right?”

Betty thinks about the fostering process. They did have some choices, and there had been more boys in the system than girls, so they had chosen a boy. But they didn’t really know what Jace was like, or any details of his background before they went to the social service office to pick him up. 

But they had chosen to keep him of course. The first month they could easily have just kept their role as foster parents temporary, but they knew almost right away that they wanted Jace in their life forever. 

“In a way, yes. When you first came to live with us, it could have just been temporary. But when we met, spent time with you, we knew you were our son.”

“That’s not how being pregnant works, right?” Jace asks, a serious expression on his face. Betty has a hard time forcing herself not to laugh.

“Not really, no.” Betty says, a smile on her face. Then she feels sadness come over her, because Jace’s parents did give him up, but he’s still got a smile on his face, so he must not have made the same connection. 

“So can you pick a brother for me?” Jace asks.

“Maybe,” Betty says with a shrug. She knows Jughead wants it. But the first year with Jace had taken so much out of both of them. It was hard knowing that they’d probably have to go through that again. “Would you want to be a big brother or a little brother?”

“Big brother, I don’t want another boss.” 

Betty laughs. “Ok, then. We will look into it.” She kisses him gently on the forehead, and then gets up. 

“I love you,” she says and she hears Jace say it back to her, before the door closes behind her. 

Betty just wants to collapse on the sofa, but there are a pile of dirty dishes next to the sink that have to be dealt with first. 

 

**9:43pm**

Jughead’s phone pings again and he can’t help but check it. It’s another endless twitter update. He’s checked his phone 30 times in the last hour, and Betty has instead spent all that time writing, something entirely unrelated to Twitter.

“How can you do that?” Jughead asks, starring at the sofa across from him, watching as his wife types in a focused steady manner.

“Do what?” Betty asks, looking over at him. She’s sitting up cross legged, the laptop perched on her thighs. She’s got a focused expression on her face, as if she’s more concerned with the words that she’s typing, than whatever he’s saying. Jughead can’t blame her. 

“Focus on writing when people are saying nasty things?”

When Jughead’s first book came out he made the mistake of reading reviews on Good Reads and Amazon. Some of the things people said in their reviews cut him to the quick. But most of the reviews were positive, and all of them were about his book, not him (although a number of them speculated on the authenticity of his tale – that just comes with the territory of being a modern writer). This is a key difference. 

Since the first book, Jughead had focused on publishing primarily mystery books. Books with no ties at all to his life, past or present, and the discourse has mostly left him. He’s gossiped about. He’s sure at Columbia, he’s heard muttering. But on the internet most people focus on his books. 

He can’t imagine if people were discussing his sexual orientation (as boring as it is), or his faithfulness, or his sex life like this. Betty swears she hasn’t looked, but some conservative troll has dug up a fair amount of information on her and Val (nothing Jughead didn’t know), but it’s still disconcerting. 

It’s taking Jughead’s considerable self-discipline not to send scathingly mean messages to everyone who says something bad. This is his wife they’re talking about, and even before she was his wife, even before she was his girlfriend, she was the most ethical and caring person that he knew. Yet they’re treating her like she’s a liar or worse. 

Betty looks up from her computer, meets Jughead’s gaze and then says, “Sorry, could you repeat the question?”

“How can you just tune out everyone on the internet badmouthing you?” Jughead says.

Betty laughs, which surprises him. “It’s pretty easy. For one thing they aren’t all saying bad things about me. Lots of people, even people who don’t know me, are saying positive things. For another, I sold 5,000 copies of the book today alone, which is unprecedented. Besides I grew up in a small town where everyone knew my father had killed his whole family except for me, so really compared to that level of gossip, this is easy.”

Jughead laughs too. After all these years he sometimes forgets how far she has come. He’s been to Riverdale now a number of times, enough to know that the reputation of her father, long forgotten everywhere else in the context of her accomplishments, still dominates all discussion of her there. At least that’s not what was being discussed right now on the internet.

“I get that,” Jughead says. He gets up and walks across to her, then sits down beside her. She closes the laptop. “I’m sorry I got so upset on your behalf.”

“It’s ok. I get it.” 

“You do?” Jughead’s pretty sure he’s wasted at least part of what could have been a perfect Saturday worrying about something he had zero control over. 

“You wanted to protect me. Look, as easy as I found this to handle, if this was happening to you, if our positions we’re reversed, I’d feel differently.”

“Oh?” Jughead raised his eyebrows. “You’d be protective of me?”

“A hundred percent. You’re my person.” 

Jughead leans in and gives Betty a kiss. It’s soft and gentle but reciprocated warmly, and then she’s on his lap, and Jughead’s tugging her t-shirt up.

“Betty. Jughead.” Jace’s voice calls from his room. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Do you think he saw us?” Jughead whispers into Betty’s ear.

“Have you stopped kissing now so I can go pee?” Jace shouts again. 

Betty pulls her shirt down and whispers in Jughead’s ear, “He saw something.” Then she shouts, “You can come out now.”

Jace has a nervous look on his face as he runs for the bathroom. Jughead switches off his phone for the night so he won’t be distracted again. When Jace runs back to bed he stops by the sofa and hugs them both. 

Jace close the door behind himself and shouts, “You can kiss now.” 

“That’s too much pressure,” Betty laughs, but that doesn’t stop Jughead from kissing her again.

He pulls away, stands up, and pulling Betty by the hand heads to their bedroom. He locks the door behind them, his hand already under her bra, pressing against her breast. 

It strikes Jughead as funny, how sometimes having kids can make him feel like a teen again, like he has to sneak around just to get these moments of delicious privacy.

**10:30pm**

Betty sighs and lays War and Peace on the bedside table. “I should have gone to sleep ages ago.”

Jughead raises an eyebrow. He’s still holding Train Dreams in his hands. “I wasn’t stopping you.”

Betty laughs. “No. At least I can sleep in tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll look after Jace,” Jughead says. Although now sometimes Jace is capable of sleeping in, it is usually only on school days. 

“Hey, Jace brought up having a brother at bedtime.”

“Oh. Not a sister?”

“He seems to have strong gender preference.” 

Jughead laughs and shakes his head, “What did you say?”

“Well, I have been thinking about it.”

“I have too,” Jughead says. Betty’s not surprised. Whenever he talked about children before Jace it was always in the plural. Jace’s first year was rough, full of angry phone calls from his teachers, and awkward apologies to strangers, but now everything was in a good rhythm. Now the plural seemed possible again.

“Are we going to become parents again?”

“If you want to.” 

“I do,” Betty says.

The smile on Jughead’s face is huge. “Can we call the social worker in the morning?”

“Tomorrow morning is Sunday,” Betty laughs.

“First thing Monday then?” 

Betty nods. It feels terrifying but right. She gets up and turns off the light. 

“I’m too excited to go to sleep,” Jughead groans.

“Then cuddle me till I fall asleep and then go out and read in the living room.”

“Fine,” Jughead says, placing a warm hand against Betty’s waist and then scooting her towards him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I’m finally admitting it! There’s going to be two more chapters. I know what they are going to be and what they are going to cover. Also subscribe to the series as a whole, because after those two chapters are done, there is going to be a final story, in a totally different format. 
> 
> Also while the next two chapters are not even started, the final story is 60% complete. So even though the summer is crazy busy for me, the goal is to have all this finished by August (If I can ever actually stop writing this version of Bughead - i'm a little in love with them and their whole family!


	4. One Year Later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gratitude to the talented and wonderful Kittilee for betaing.

7:05 AM

Betty’s eyelids are still heavy with sleep as she stumbles into the kitchen. She’s still in her pajamas, or as Jughead likes to call them, soft clothes. 

She’s so tired that she feels tempted to crawl back into bed, but that’s not how the world works anymore. Betty is the only one awake, the apartment is quiet around her, she knows it won’t stay that way. 

Betty starts brewing the coffee and preparing the oatmeal. It’s a sunny day outside, the early fall light is beautiful. 

A year ago, Betty couldn’t imagine skipping her morning run on a day like this, then nine months ago she stepped down from her job at the New Yorker, and her whole world shifted. Now runs were an afternoon thing.

“Morning, Betty,” Jace says padding into the kitchen in Batman PJ’s, a stuffed dinosaur still in one arm. 

“Morning Jace,” she says, stirring the oatmeal. 

He comes up beside her and hugs her waist. He’s so tall now, so old. 

It’s always nice to see him first thing in the morning though, he always seems younger at that point in the day, probably just because of the stuffed animal. “I love you.”

“What’s for breakfast?”

“Oatmeal.”

“Yuck.” The face he pulls is so expressive, Betty can’t help but smile.

“With peanut butter and maple syrup.”

Jace nods his head slightly. “Acceptable.” 

“Can you go get dressed?” Betty asks. No matter how early they wake up, actually making it to school on time seems like a miracle. When it was just Jace it was easier, more predictable. Now that they had River, things had changed on a fundamental level. 

“I don’t have any clean clothes,” Jace says.

“I laid out an outfit last night,” Betty points out, spooning the peanut butter into the oatmeal. She can tell that Jace is debating protesting. She knows how this goes. Some mornings are a battle, no matter how you cut it. 

Today Jace seems to be ok with avoiding a battle, he shrugs and walks back into his room. 

Betty stirs the peanut butter in, and then turns the stove off and ladles the contents into four bowls, adding a small amount of syrup to each bowl, even though she knows Jughead will just add more. 

A yowl like a wild cat comes from River’s room. Betty runs in. He’s on the floor covered in a pile of sheets and blankets, only a hand visible. She pulls him out. 

His hair, black and straight, is pointing every possible direction and he has an angry look in his eyes. Betty is always careful how she touches him, and now is no different, she takes a step back and is surprised when he presses his face against her stomach, his arms around her hips.

“Was it a nightmare?” she asks. When he doesn’t answer she says, “You’re safe. You’re loved.”

River has been with them nine months now, and none of those months could be described as easy. He has been bouncing between foster families since he was found alone in a boat on the Hudson River when he was nine months old. He was wearing a onsie with the phrase “the snuggle is real” on it. 

Betty had a hard time seeing that phrase after that. There was nothing else in the boat with him but a few coins. After that, he bounced from house to house to house. The longest he ever lived anywhere before this was six month.

He’s not a big fan of anyone older than eleven and sometimes Jace is the only person who can get through to him. 

If they were in their right minds, they probably would have given him back to social services to find another family after he had broken Jughead’s arm (the cast had only been removed last Monday). 

Toni was very vocal about the fact that she thought they were crazy to be moving forward with the paperwork to adopt River. But for Betty there was no other choice. Jughead understood that. He supported her in this decision, it was one they made together when his arm was in the cast. 

When they first took in River it was always with the intention to adopt him. To give him a chance at a stable future. The same way Fred had given Betty a chance all those years ago, when she was kicking teachers and punching students. 

Toni thought that some other mythical family might fit River better, that he might not be violent with them. Betty knew that if they didn’t adopt River there would be no family, instead there would be a series of houses, ongoing till he aged out of the system. 

River breaks the hug off and starts tearing off his clothes. Betty leaves the room. He’s five, he knows what to do. 

Jughead and Jace are eating at the dining room table. Jughead’s half heartedly scrolling through his phone, hair a total mess. Jace is talking non-stop about the book he’s reading about teenage superheroes. 

They have to be on the subway in 15 minutes but at least Jace is dressed and eating. Betty goes back to her own bedroom and shoves on some jeans and a shirt.

Lots of mother’s are dressed up at drop-off, but now that Betty’s not working in an office she can’t see the point in that. She does run a hairbrush through her hair and puts it up in a ponytail.

Betty is back in the main room with five minutes to spare. She presses a kiss against Jughead’s cheek and he hums appreciatively. 

River’s eating quickly, with a spoon and a fork and Betty can’t bring herself to intervene. At least no one’s screaming.

Back when they just had Jace, Betty would be getting ready for work too, but now that she freelanced, all of the pressure was gone, or rather it had shifted.

She was just as busy, busier in some ways, but there was no commute, no office or real co-workers. Just herself and the written word.

She had a regular column for the New York Times on what it means to be a family. The column has an international focus and mostly incorporates readers stories. Betty was also writing another book, a research based series of profiles on victims. All women that had been killed. But the focus was on them, the perpetrators of the crime were never mentioned. 

When they first fostered River it was a debate between Jughead and herself, as to which one would step down from their official job. 

Betty didn’t like the cliché of being the mother and giving up work, but she also felt burnt out, ready for the shift from being an editor to a writer to occur.

She starts scrambling around the apartment to put things in the boys backpacks. Really, they should be doing this, but then it would take twice as long. Motherhood had taught Betty when to pick her battles. 

Somehow, (and it really feels like a miracle), everyone is out the door at the same time, fed, dressed and ready for the day. Or rather everyone but Betty is. Her oatmeal has congealed in its bowl on the counter.

They walk to the subway together. Jace running a little ahead and River walking a little behind. Betty and Jughead hold hands. The temperature is just cold enough to require the lightest of jackets.

It’s the first day in a while where there are no meltdowns on the way to the station and Betty feels her heart glowing at the surprising ease of it all. 

The boys school is in midtown, and Columbia is in Harlem so they part ways on the subway platform. Jughead pressing a chaste kiss to her lips and then another to her forehead, “I love you,” he whispers as if it’s a secret.

His train arrives first and he gets on, waving goodbye, and then at the last moment before the doors close, he shouts “I love you” across the platform. Jace actually jumps with delight. River smiles, albeit briefly.

10:30 AM

Jughead’s next class starts in 30 minutes, and he should be getting ready for it, but instead he’s trying to plan a trip for Betty. At first it was supposed to be for their anniversary but that happened three months ago now. 

It’s hard, between the kids, the job, and the writing to make it clear how grateful he is for all that she does. 

A long time ago on their first anniversary he asked what she hoped their life would be like in a decade and she’d said, “Traveling, writing, and being together. Lots of moments of quiet simplicity.” 

The word quiet didn’t feature prominently in their lives currently, and neither did the word travel. He wanted to give her some of that. 

So he’s on ShareBnB trying to make big life decisions when he gets a knock on his office door, or rather the door frame, he always leaves the door open. 

One of his freshmen students, Jughead doesn’t remember his name, although maybe it starts with a C, is standing there. He’s got black hair and olive skin, and he looks more like Jughead than either of his son’s ever will, but Jughead couldn’t care less about that.

“Come in,” Jughead says. He always encouraged his students to take advantage of office hours. Yet he was never sure what to do with them if they did.

“Prof. Jones, I had a question for you,” the man/boy says slumping into the office chair across from Jughead.

“Shoot, although remind me of your name first.” Jughead hates admitting that he doesn’t know this person’s name, but he doesn’t. He has over a hundred fifty students right now and names have never been his strong suit.

“I’m Clive.” The boy responds running a hand through his hair. “And I was wondering if you’d read my manuscript.”

Shit, one of those people, a stranger who thinks that Jughead owes him something because he’s his professor. 

“You’re in my Introduction to Creative Writing class, right?” Jughead’s pretty confident in this guess, but he’s been wrong before. 

Clive shoots him a grin, “It’s a great class.” In Jughead’s opinion it isn’t. It’s the class none of the tenured professors want to teach so they toss it to each other like a hot potato. This semester it’s Jughead’s turn, but then he won’t have to teach it again for another year. 

It’s a terrible class for two reasons. First, it’s too big to really be a creative writing class in terms of students, even with TA’s to help grade it’s unwieldy. Second, it’s supposed to cover fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry. That sort of survey course is destined to fail. 

Still Jughead nods, like he believes the compliment. 

“I have a hundred students in that class alone.” Jughead says. “I have two more classes that I’m teaching, a family, and a novel to write. I’m sorry, but I just don’t have the time.”

Jughead always feels bad turning people down like this, but he also feels pissed off. They shouldn’t have asked him in the first place. If he said yes to even half of the requests he got like this, he wouldn’t have time do anything else. 

“But I’m paying you.” Clive says, his jaw slack a little. 

Jughead stops himself from pointing out that only a very small portion of his salary comes from Clive’s tuition, and just says, “You can take it up with my boss.” Jughead writes down the email address quickly.

Clive’s lips are downturned now, and Jughead suspects he might cry. Jughead doesn’t want that, not today anyways so he says, “If you take one of my other creative writing classes, the ones for more advanced students I’ll read your writing as part of that.”

Clive nods and leaves in silence. Jughead’s in a bit of a bad mood now, and all of his time is gone with no surprise trip planned, no class preparation made, it’s frustrating. He grabs his sherpa and runs for his next class.

11:00

Lucas is beside Betty, his stride matching hers. They run together twice a week, on Tuesdays in Prospect Park near his brownstone, and on Thursday’s in Central Park near the condo. 

Betty thought the day would never come when they were both stay at home parents, although they were also still both working.

“Can we stop at the botanical gardens?” Lucas asks.

“Sure.” Betty shouts back. The park’s rather deserted for such a nice day. But it’s always quieter here then Central Park, more dilapidated, but comforting somehow. 

“Do you want to race?”

Betty should turn him down. They’ve raced many times before and he’s always won. Lucas is capable of sprinting in a way she will never be. 

The word no is firmly in her head but the word “Sure!” comes out of her mouth and suddenly she’s pounding the pavement as hard and fast as she can. 

Betty swears she can hear her own heartbeat. She pushes all out, but still, twenty feet before the entrance to the gardens Lucas passes her, a goofy grin on his face. 

She flips him the bird and then stops, dousing herself with her water bottle. She’s gross now. So is he, but only one of them will have to ride the subway like this. His home is just a few blocks from here. 

It was a good run, because she feels both exhausted and like she is capable of doing anything. It’s a contradictory state but one she often feels post run.

“How’s River doing?” Lucas asks as they head towards the little corner spot they always grab coffee at.

“He hasn’t gotten kicked out of school yet,” Betty says. Other parents she knows brag about straight A’s and accolades. Betty’s big claim to fame as a parent of a kindergartener and a first grader is that neither of them had been expelled. “He’s only been suspended, and it’s almost October.” 

Lucas shakes his head “Way to start with the positive. None of my kids have ever been suspended.” 

Lucas has four kids and Betty loves them all, but they had a very different start than her own. All four were born into a stable situation, a happy marriage between two individuals with good income and free time. 

Betty knew there were plenty of adopted and fostered kids that had achieved some semblance of that, that had never been suspended from school. Jace, in spite of some initial hiccups, had never been suspended. 

Betty didn’t know if it was the kind of trauma he had been through or just the kind of person he was, but River wasn’t one to take insults easily, which means he got into a lot of fights. It was something Betty understood well, because it was the kind of foster kid she had been, even with a parental figure as stable as Fred.

She and Lucas had been friends for over a decade, but there was still a good chance he didn’t know how many times she’d been suspended from school. She might have a graduate degree, but her elementary school record was undeniably terrible.

Lucas doesn’t understand that Betty really does think this is positive. She’s hoping that by committing to having him in their family permanently, he’ll grow to feel safe with them. That River will understand what family really is, and that will help him have a full and wonderful life.

Whenever she’s brought up the adoption with River he’s seemed almost neutral about it. He’s not opposed, he just doesn’t seem convinced that it was real. Sometimes she’d catch him making a casual reference to his “next family.” Betty doesn’t correct him, but she has every reason to hope that his next family will be the one he creates with a significant other in the distant future.

“I mean it, Lucas. River has PTSD, we’re at different spaces in parenting because of that.”

Lucas nods, “But I mean you had PTSD, but there’s no way you got suspended from school.”

Betty laughs, Lucas doesn’t know about her sordid past after all. “I was suspended 10 times.” His eyes go wide. “Mostly for physical violence.”

“Betty!” Lucas says. “You can still surprise me.”

Betty shrugs. “I think it’s a good thing. I think I understand River in a way most people wouldn’t. You see violence up close the way when you are young, and you think the world works a different way.”

Lucas nods. “So are you going to try for four kids too?”

Betty shakes her head, “Two is our limit I think.”

“Is now a good time to tell you we are trying for number five?”

A host of thoughts cross Betty’s mind. The first is poor Lila, the second is a surprising pulse of jealousy, the third has to do with financial planning. She doesn’t say any of that out loud though. Instead she just smiles. “That’s great.”

1 PM

Jughead’s typing the same sentence over and over again. It still seems wrong. He’s been working on his latest mystery novel and it keeps falling flat. 

He can’t bring himself to care for the character anymore and so the mystery seems pointless. 

When he first started writing the series after graduate school he loved the main character, Owen Hart. Jughead was drawn to Owen’s stand alone arrogance, the push and pull that Owen felt with his partner. 

Now Jughead felt like Owen was a stranger, or worse - a generic stand in for every private eye ever written before. 

Sometimes due to the lack of novel writing progress, Jughead worried that he was depressed, but outside of writing he was happy, he was engaged. But when he sat down at the laptop to write it felt like he was running into a brick wall over and over again.

He had sent his editor the first hundred pages and he’d liked them well enough. He didn’t seem to see the same flaws in the text Jughead did. 

Instead of writing another line of his novel Jughead texts Betty - Why did I create such a shitty character?

Minutes later he gets her reply - You didn’t. You were just a different person back then. 

Maybe that’s what it comes down to. Even after Jughead marrie Betty he always imagined himself on his own till they had kids, even though that wasn’t the truth. That past Jughead had a lot more in common with Owen Hart than the Jughead who read thirty minutes of Captain Underpants out loud before Jace went to bed. 

So what should I do?, Jughead texts Betty

His phone dings almost immediately - Write something you actually care about. 

Jughead shakes his head. If only it was that easy. No one wants to read a 100,000 word novel about a man with a happy family and a wife that loves him.

Where are you? Jughead texts. Instead of words he receives a photo of the view out of their living room window. Betty uses the living room as her defacto office now since all the bedrooms are otherwise occupied.

Jughead glances at the time and feels a familiar tug of temptation. His last class starts at 3. He’ll have to rush, but unless the subway breaks down he should be fine. 

He tugs on his jacket and rushes out the door. The ride home ends up being quick. The walk only a few blocks. 

When Jughead opens the door to the apartment he sees Betty tucked into the corner of the sofa. She’s typing something rapidly. 

She looks up to see him. There’s a flash of warmth and surprise. “What are you doing home?” Betty asks. “Did you forget something?”

Jughead answers by pressing his lips against hers and then giving her butt a squeeze, half teasing, half heat. 

3:30 PM

“But I don’t want to go,” Jace whines. It reminds Betty of the younger version of him, the one that still threw his whole body down on the floor and flailed around when he was angry. Betty’s so glad he doesn’t do that anymore. For one thing, it would be really hard to move him now that he was 45 pounds.

“Jace, you can watch something on my phone while River and I are in the office,” Betty says. Jace might be complaining, but at least he’s following Betty as she makes her way towards the subway. 

Most of the other students are heading off with nanny’s to the park today, so for once they are fairly alone on the sidewalk.

“I don’t wanna go either,” River says. 

“You both like Violet,” Betty says, even though she understands their general reluctance. Most of the time River’s social worker makes house calls, but today they’re bringing in a child psychologist to check in with River so an office meeting is a must. 

“I like her as far as social workers go,” Jace says, as if he knows so much about social workers. 

“Do you even remember yours?” Betty asks. She’d be surprised. Jace had been four at the time and his memory from back then was far from perfect. 

She asked him once what was his first memory of living with them and he said it was of them taking him to the circus. They had taken him a year after he was adopted. He didn’t remember life before them at all, which was probably for the best. Still sometimes Jace liked to pretend to remember things.

“She was Asian, right?” 

Betty laughs. “Not even close.”

“Do you remember your social worker?” Jace asked. The question surprises her. Betty’s told both of them about her past, but they rarely bring it up. 

“Yes. Her name was Agatha. The Andrews house was never clean enough for her.” Betty remembers feeling anxious every time she visited, sure that Agatha would take her away.

“Really?” River says. 

“Really.” Betty nods as she pays her fare. The kids are still free.

The train comes quickly but the ride is a long one. All the way up to the far reaches of Harlem. Betty thinks they should probably just drop by Jughead’s work on the way back. 

The offices are close to the train but by then the kids are both really whining and Betty’s glad to arrive and to sit on the worn out benches in the waiting room as the kids eat their granola bars.

Violet, her long dark hair up in a bun, comes out of her office with an older woman with short gray hair.

“River, can you go with Dr. Lewis? I want to talk to your mom for a bit.”

Jace rolls his eyes. “What should I do?” 

Betty hands him her unlocked phone, Netflix is already loaded on it. If she was a better parent she’d probably tell him to do his homework, but it wouldn’t really help matters. The waiting room is uncomfortable and a poor place to study.

River doesn’t complain, just walks with Dr. Lewis into one of the offices. River’s seen Dr. Lewis on and off for years. She’s been in his life longer than Betty.

Betty follows Violet into her office. The blinds are up, which makes the room more appealing than usual, but the dust more visible.

Violet shuts the door behind her. “I saw River’s school report.”

“I know. Three B’s,” Betty says.

Violet shakes her head. “I was thinking more of the one fight.”

“There was a racial slur involved.” There was also a very biased teacher, but there’s no point in bringing that up.

“Still it was a serious incident.”

“Nothing like last year.” Betty says and they both know it’s true. River had broken a fellow students nose last year in a fit of rage, and he’d also punched an older student in the gut.

Both incidents had involved food. Betty suspected that at one or more of the foster homes, River hadn’t been able to eat enough and for this reason he’s territorial and angry when he thinks someone’s taking his. 

Jughead jokes that it’s a Jones trait. Not that he was joking much when River broke his arm over the last peanut butter cookie. 

Violet nods. She’s a good social worker. Betty likes her. She actually listens and cares. She’s not burnt out yet. 

“So you still want to move forward with the adoption?”

“Our love is not conditional,” Betty says. 

Violet nods and hands Betty a manila envelope. “This is the last of the paperwork. I’ll pick it up next week.”

“Wow,” Betty says, it feels like everything is happening faster than it did with Jace, but that could be perception more than reality. “Will that be the last time we see you?” As much as she likes Violet, home visits are stressful.

Violet smiles, “Unless you’re planning on taking in another child.”

Betty thinks about how much Jace and River have added to their lives, in terms of joy and stress. She thinks having a third child wouldn’t help them be better parents. “No,” she says, noting the disappointment on Violet’s face. 

She understands why Violet’s disappointed. Families willing to foster to adopt older children are rare and hard to find. 

So Betty adds, “But if there was an emergency situation, you could call us.” She knows Jughead wouldn’t mind. He always seems happiest when the Topaz-Lodge kids are over too. 

Violet smiles “Do you leave the definition of “emergency” up to me?”

“I trust you. Is there anything else you need me to do?” 

“Nope, this is it,” Violet says and then shakes her head. “One more thing, mandatory therapy is done now but we really encourage you to find someone for River to continue seeing.”

Betty laughs as she gets up. “Of course. We’re going to see if Jace’s therapist is a good match first, if not we will keep looking.

Even though Betty knows she’ll see Violet next week, she feels a little emotional as she leaves the office, River refusing to hold her hand.

On the subway a stranger brushes by him and River starts screaming. He flings himself on the ground, limbs spread wide like a starfish. 

At first he’s yelling words like hate and asshole and then it’s just incoherent yelling. Strangers shoot her looks of outrage and judgment. 

Betty picks him up from the floor of the train, then fireman carries him the rest of the way home. He pushes against her initially, but by the time she’s two blocks from the apartment his body has gone limp, he’s completely silent. Betty suspects he fell asleep. 

Jace is walking behind them, a pensive look on his face. He helps Betty open the doors once they get back.

“Was that a meltdown?” Jace asks.

“Something like that.”

“He’s asleep now.” 

Betty lays him on his bed. She takes a step back. His face is still wet from the tears but he looks peaceful in sleep, young and handsome. Betty feels about ready to take a nap herself.

“Can I stay here with him?” Jace asks, “So he doesn’t wake up alone.”

“That’s a good idea. I love you.”

“I love you, Betty,” Jace says and then in a quieter voice he asks, “I was never like that, was I?”

Betty almost laughs. Jace’s first six months with them were filled with events exactly like this one. But there was a big difference. He was four at the time, where as River is six.

“You were younger than River, but you had moments that were exactly like that.”

Jace appears to be taking this new piece of information in and digesting it. 

5:05

Jughead presses a kiss onto Betty’s cheek. “I can’t believe they’re both still in there.”

“I know,” Betty says with a shrug and then she refocuses on cutting the carrots. “Maybe Jace fell asleep too.”

Jughead shakes his head, “That just seems so unlikely. Can I check?”

“Sure. I left the door open a crack. Don’t open it further if you can help it.”

“I just wish you hadn’t been on your own. That’s a lot to handle.”

“That’s just how parenting works sometimes. I just hope he’s not doing this a year from now. He’s already a lot to carry.”

Jughead steals a carrot from the cutting board and then heads towards River’s room. 

Even before he looks through the crack, he knows they’re up because he hears them talking on the other side of the door.

River says, “They’re going to return me. I know it.”

Jace laughs, “That’s not how it works at all.”

“It’s how it’s always worked before.”

“They’re different. They told you they were going to adopt you, they meant it. They’re your parents now, forget the word foster.”

There’s silence between the two boys and Jughead puts his eye up to the crack in the door. He can see Jace’s arm around River. They’re both sitting on River’s bed, backs to the wall.

“Are they your parents too?” River asks.

“Yes.”

“Then why do you call them Betty and Jughead still?”

Jughead’s breath catches in his throat. He’s wanted to ask Jace this for years, but it never seemed like the right thing to say. It was a line too far. He didn’t want to pressure him to answer something as potentially awkward as that.

“My mom and dad, I don’t know who they were. I don’t remember them. I don’t know if it was even them that left me at the shopping mall. But because of that, I just never liked those words much. Betty and Jughead are so much more than that, to me.” 

It’s moments like this where Jughead has faith in a higher power of some sort. It feels like a blessing has just been bestowed upon him.

Jughead didn’t want the fact that Jace always used their full names to hurt him, but it did from time to time. Now that he knew the reason it wouldn’t ever bother him again. 

“Do you think they’d care if I called them that?” River asks.

“I think they’d like that. They love you, you know.”

“I know. They say that too much.” 

Jughead can tell from his tone of voice that he doesn’t really mean it. Jughead backs away from the door, so whatever they talk about after that he doesn’t hear, but it doesn’t matter. His heart is already glowing. He’s sure Betty’s will be in a minute. 

8:00

Betty tucks River into bed. In the other room she can hear Jughead reading the BFG to Jace. Jughead’s making a lot of funny noises, and Betty suspects she knows what chapter he’s on.

“How did you know you would end up with Fred always?” River asks. His eyes are focused not on her, but on the teddy bear stuffy, the one toy he brought with him, that his fingers are clenched tightly around.

Betty’s surprised by the question but also not surprised. She knows River’s anxious about the adoption and she knows he has good reason to be, but she didn’t know where his anxiety was focused. 

“I didn’t,” Betty says, perhaps more bluntly than she should. River doesn’t know Fred the way Jace does. 

Fred got sick about a year ago and while they still see him as much as possible, things have shifted. Fred uses a walker now. He talks slower, hears less. He’s still the best person Betty knows, he always will be, but because of the timing of all this, he hadn’t forged the same close connection with River that he had with Jace. Jace usually hyper and physical is happy to just cuddle into Fred’s side and watch HGTV. 

When River asks this question Betty knows it’s less about Fred, it’s about her, and even more importantly it’s about River, and his feeling of safety and permanence. 

Betty would love to assure River that she knew Fred would always be there for her when he raised that chainsaw to protect her all those years ago, but that’s not how it worked.

When Betty’s father killed the rest of her family, all the rules her young life had been guided by, went out the window. She remembers waking up every morning at the Andrews and thinking that hopefully she could sleep there again. 

Then Mary left a few years later and it seemed like a confirmation that adults weren't there to stay. 

But Fred always did. Betty ended up being the one who left eventually. She knows that Fred’s going to die sooner rather than later, even though she loathes thinking about it in those terms. 

She knows when that happens, it won’t be Fred’s fault, but the younger version of her wouldn’t. That Betty would have been betrayed, and River is in the same mental space Betty once was in. 

She wants to reassure him that they will always be there for him, but in a realistic way. 

While she thinks about all this, River stays still. Betty places a hand against his chest and says “When my family died, I didn’t know how to move forward. It’s like the rules of the universe as I knew it stopped working. So even though I knew Fred my whole life and I trusted him, I knew that a lot of what happened was beyond his control.”

“Oh.”

“One of my aunts, someone I’d only met once, wanted to take me in at first and that made things harder for him. It took the Andrews two years to be able to legally adopt me because of her actions.”

River nods, and Betty continues, ”When I first lived with Fred, I used to be upset a lot. I got in fights. I once threw everything in the refrigerator on the floor. I made such a mess. I broke three jam jars and it took forever to clean up. Fred got frustrated, but he never yelled. It took a long time, but by the time I was in high school, I figured out that as long as Fred was alive, I’d be his child, that I was as much his as Archie was.”

“Did you tell him that you thought he would leave you, when you were little?” River asks, wide eyed. 

“No! I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. But he knew anyways, Fred was good like that. I think it bothered him, but he never complained about it, or pressed.” Betty meets River’s gaze now. “You have to know that Jughead and I will try our best to be your parents. That barring death we will always be here for you. But we expect the adjustment to take time.”

River nods. “Do you think that’s why I broke Jughead’s arm?” 

Betty raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Maybe, but let’s not do that again.”

“I felt so bad after. But in the moment, it felt so good.”

Betty shakes her head. She’d like to scold him, but at least he was honest. “Always try to use your words first. I love your words.”

9:30

Jughead signs his name on the last line of the adoption paperwork. It should feel like a big deal, but instead it feels anticlimactic. 

He thinks it’s funny that he was an accident, but both his children have been chosen and worked for in such a deliberate way. 

He looks up from the paperwork to see Betty pouring two glasses of wine. They rarely drink but this seemed like a good moment. A way to make it a little more memorable.

Betty sits next to him on the sofa and he shifts a little, so their thighs are touching. “Violet asked if we’d consider another child,” Betty says. 

“What did you say?” Jughead asks. Now that Betty doesn’t have an office job she takes care of most of the household details. The weight of childcare falls more on her than initially planned. 

“Only in an emergency, for a short period of time. I know I have enough love for another child, but not enough energy.”

Jughead nods. Part of him could handle two more children even three, but that is not the practical part. 

“Unless you have a different opinion?” Betty asks tentatively. 

“I do not,” Jughead says, taking a sip of the wine. It’s good, which is to say it tastes a little of the earth. 

He’s so grateful for his family in this moment, for the casual way Betty leans into him, her head resting on his shoulder. His body has become so accustomed to hers. 

“I love you. I love our family,” he says. He’s thinking so much more than that. About how this life is the right one for him, even though it isn’t the one he would have chosen for himself, in so many ways. 

How if it was up to him, he’d never write another mystery novel and live in a way that would make it possible to write every day with Betty, to spend long afternoons with the kids and not just story hour before bed. 

Even though these thoughts are unspoken he has a feeling that Betty is thinking along the same lines. When she does speak next all she says is, “I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am grateful for any and all feedback!


	5. Two Years Later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge thanks to KittiLee for being such a wonderful beta, friend, and artist. She’s the best! I’m so lucky to have her in my life.

2:00 AM

Jughead fumbles around in the dark. His phone is ringing loudly. The only person that ever calls him this late is Betty, and she’s asleep on the bed beside him, her back pressed into him even now.

He pulls away from her in search of his cell phone, his elbow bumping the bedside table first. A sharp spike of pain traveling up his arm, then his fingers find the phone, and grasp it’s side. 

The number is unknown, but local, so Jughead answers it anyway. 

“Hello?” he says into it. 

A soft female voice replies, “Hi, it’s Violet from social services.”

Jughead is suddenly fully awake. He hasn’t seen Violet in over two years, since River’s adoption paperwork went through, but he remembers her fondly. She was easy to work with and seemed to genuinely care about her clients. 

None of these details explain why she’s calling now. They were no longer on the list of families seeking foster children. They were now a cohesive family of four. River and Jace settled firmly into their roles as sons and as brothers. 

“It’s Jughead,” he says, although she probably already knows that. She’s the one that called him after all. “What’s happening?”

Jughead can hear Violet take a deep breath on the other end of the line. “Betty still had you on the emergency list, did you want to be taken off?”

It was so long ago Jughead had almost forgotten about that. They’d both come to assume they would never be called.

Jughead hadn’t thought of fostering in years, but there was something about Violet’s tone that made him want to reconsider, in this case at least, knowing that it was an emergency.

“No. Is there an Emergency?” 

“Two weeks ago, a baby girl was born with heart issues. She was supposed to be adopted earlier this week, but two families backed out when they realized how much work and money was involved. The hospital bill is adding up and they are going to kick her out in five hours. We could place her with a foster family, but once she was in that system, it would be tricky for her to find a permanent placement. We don’t want her to bounce around the system forever.”

Just a minute ago, maybe even not a full minute ago, Jughead had thought of his family as complete. Violet had changed everything with just those last few sentences. But it wasn’t a decision that was just up to him. 

“Let me check with Betty first. Hang on,” he says into the phone. 

He looks around the bed for her, only for the overhead light to turn on. Betty’s standing in the doorway, her hand moving away from the switch. Even at two in the morning, and half asleep his wife is gorgeous, yet that’s the least important fact about her.

“What’s going on?” she asks as she stumbles back into bed. 

He presses the cell phone against his chest, so Violet can’t overhear, and recaps the whole situation as quickly as he can.

“Do you want to?” Betty asks.

“Yes. Do you?”

“Yes.” Her eyes are bright when she says it.

“There’s health complications. It will be expensive and tough.”

“I don’t care.”

Jughead brings the phone back up to his face and says, “We will take her.”

 

3:25 AM

In spite of the hour, Betty feels completely awake. She’s pacing the halls of Mount Sinai restlessly. Violet said she’d meet them there, but she hasn’t arrived yet. 

The baby is in the room to their left, but they have not been able to meet her. 

Betty’s never felt more ready to be on the other side of a door in her life. She wants to know what their daughter looks like, what she feels like in their arms. The anticipation is driving her insane.

“Are we crazy to be doing this?” Jughead says for the umpteenth time since they arrived.   
Betty thought the question was absurd even the first time he asked it. 

Jughead had always wanted a baby. She’d seen him coo and dance and play with all five of Lila and Lucas’s kids. He adored Toni and Veronica’s girls. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t love the boys the same way, that wasn’t true, he loved them so very much, but he’d always wanted to know them during their baby stage even thought that is not how time works. 

It was one of the reasons Betty tried so long and hard to have kids of their own. The very idea that after all these years they would turn a baby down, particularly one in need, seemed absurd.

Violet had emailed Jughead the primer on what kind of care the baby would need. It was all outlined in an excruciatingly thorough document but it was very much doable. Expensive, and hard work, but not unmanageable. 

Betty knows the real reason Jughead keeps asking her about the baby is that he’s nervous. He doesn’t want to be bullying her into this. Betty’s never felt the strong pull of babies the same way Jughead has. 

She certainly wouldn’t turn down holding a little baby, and she was grateful that she’d been able to hold Toni and Veronica’s daughters so much, but kids were the real pull for her. Having strange conversations about ordinary topics was one of life’s real pleasures in her openion. 

Still, she loves the idea of starting from the beginning and seeing what it involves. She also is very much looking forward to the joy it will bring Jughead, who has been mired in frustrating revisions lately. 

A year ago, this would have been more of a risk, but for the last six months things have been really great with both kids. Jace had been excelling at school and was very involved in both soccer and baseball. 

River was doing better at school. He’d transformed into a solid B student. More importantly, he had actual friends now for the first time in his life. The kind that had sleep overs and called Betty by her first name, instead of saying “Mrs. Jones”. 

Two years ago, three kids would have been untenable, but now it seemed, suddenly like the right number.

“Jug, I want to be crazy with you.” 

The smile that blooms on his face makes her heart happy. He threads his hand through hers. “I love you,” he says. 

Behind them Violet clears her throat and they turn towards her. She hasn’t changed in two years, except that she looks more exhausted, though given the hour, that is to be expected. 

“Are you ready to meet your daughter?” 

A spike of joy springs up in Betty. She loves River and Jace, she loves being the mom of boys, but the idea of having a girl, is exciting (and terrifying if she’s being entirely honest).

“We are,” Jughead says.

Violet smiles and then with a head tilt says, “Where are your sons?”

“Still at home sleeping. We called their Uncle Archie to come over and keep them company. We woke them to tell them what was going on and they seemed excited, but it was kind of hard to tell through the bleary eyes.”

Violet nods, and then starts leading them down a corridor.

“Have you thought of a name?” Violet asks.

“A name?” Betty asks.

“For your daughter.” 

“Oh, we get to name her?” Betty hadn’t even considered that. Both Jace and River had come with names, of course. Social services had seen to that. Betty had just assumed that the baby would work the same way, that she and Jughead wouldn’t have a say in that. 

“Of course.”

A hundred names that don’t seem right race through Betty’s brain. They are the names of Jace and River’s classmates and acquaintances, they don’t seem right. Then the names of favorite book characters start filtering through. The answer seems clear and obvious to Betty right away. They had just been reading Little Women out loud most nights, to River and Jace. Both boys are surprisingly obsessed with it, with one of the characters in particular.

Still it comes as a surprise to hear the name come out of Jughead’s lips – “Josephine, maybe? Although we’d just call her Jo, of course.” 

Betty laughs, “That was exactly what I was thinking!”

 

7:45 AM

They had arrived at the hospital in a cab, but they couldn’t take the baby in one without a car seat, so now in a moment that feels surreal to Jughead, they are taking their newborn daughter on the subway during rush hour. 

Betty’s got Jo cradled in her arms and Jughead is sitting next to her, a hand on her knee. All around them people are pressed against them, some disinterested, and others openly gawking.

“Is this your baby?” An elderly lady with purple hair asks.

“Yes.” Betty replies. Jo doesn’t look like Betty at all. According to Violet her parents were both Vietnamese. Still based on her squished and barely visible face, Betty could be her biological mother if Jughead wasn’t the father.

“How old?”

“Twelve days.”

The woman’s gaze passes over Betty’s body quickly and judgmentally. Jughead braces for whatever she has to say. Betty’s too occupied looking at the baby’s smiling face, “You look so good for having just given birth.”

Jughead resist’s the urge to insult her. She’s old and tired looking. There’s a button missing from her coat and he tries to focus on that. 

Betty’s expression twitches from smile to frown and then back to a smile, “Thank you.”

“What’s your secret?” The old woman says, leaning forward. 

“Adopting,” Jughead says, beating Betty to the punch. 

“Oh,” the older lady says and then looks away from them as if the advertisement for 1-800-Lawyers to their left was suddenly fascinating. When she gets off at the next stop, Jughead couldn’t help but wonder if she really needed to get off there or she just wanted to get away from the awkward situation. 

 

8:20 AM

Betty feels both bone weary and jittery with excitement. Jughead was carrying Jo now, her whole body carried in just one of his strong arms. Still Betty’s arms and shoulders ached from carrying her, and also ached to carry her. Everything had felt right in the world when Jo was in her arms. 

Betty opens the door to their building and holds it open as Jughead walks through, a smile on his face. He too looks tired, his eye bags notable, his shoulders curved forward subtly. 

“I love you,” she says. 

They take the elevator up, Jo still asleep. Betty presses against Jughead’s side so that she can see Jo’s face. Her long eye lashes visible in the harsh overhead lights. 

She wishes they could have taken River and Jace home like this, given them stability and love right from the start. At least she and Jughead found them when they did. In a way building a family with Jughead was like putting together a puzzle. Only this piece, the one in Jughead’s arms, was the surprise, the one they didn’t know they were missing.

The elevator dings and they exit. Betty can hear River and Jace shouting through the door even before they open it. However it’s not just River and Jace she hears, but also Mia and Chloe, Veronica and Toni’s daughters. 

As soon as they exit the elevator, the front door of their condo bursts open and River and Jace come running out, wrapping themselves around Betty’s legs and then jumping up and down to see the baby.

The baby wakes with a cry, by the time Mia and Chole have joined River and Jace in jumping around Jughead. Jughead rocks her slightly and that’s enough to calm her down. It doesn’t calm the older kids though.

Veronica comes out of the apartment and helps with that, grabbing first Chloe’s hand and then Mia’s and pulling them a little further back from Jughead to give him some space. 

Betty places a hand on Jace’s shoulder and he stops jumping, River per usual follows his lead. It’s strangely quiet all of a sudden, as if a hush as fallen over everyone.

Jughead says, “Careful now, you can’t touch her, and you need to stay quiet” and squats down a little so that the kids can see the baby clearly. Jace and River walk forward cautiously, Mia and Chloe drag Veronica towards the baby. 

It’s funny because somehow Toni manages to make it close to Jo first. She bends down, her face soft with joy and says “Oh, she’s beautiful.”

“She looks a little squished,” Jace points out, honestly.

“That will go away, honey,” Veronica says.

“She’s so tiny. We were never that tiny,” Chloe says. 

Chloe never was that tiny, because she wasn’t a month premature like Jo was. Neither was Mia ever that small. 

“I love her,” River says.

“I love her more,” Jace says firmly.

Betty can’t help but laugh. “Let’s get into the apartment.”

They follow her in. Jo still wide eyed and calm. Betty knows that Jo can’t actually see very far or very much yet, but she seems to be taking it all in. Her head turning slowly even as it’s cradled in Jughead’s arms.

The apartment is a surprise. It looks nothing like they left it less than 12 hours ago. The sofa is covered with onesies and baby blankets, slightly worn and familiar looking. 

There’s a brand new car seat on the floor of the living room, and an expensive looking pram, lined up next to a high chair and a baby bouncer. There are more baby things than Betty can take in at once, including a stack of diaper boxes (thankfully).   
Betty hadn’t even thought of all the stuff a baby required, and suddenly they had it all, or close enough. 

“What happened here?” Jughead says, as if he can’t even take it all in either. 

“We had some stuff lying around that we thought you could use.” Veronica shrugs, as if Jo was planned for and they didn’t just have an hour or two warning before she arrived to sort through their storage locker. 

“Do you know that Target is open 24 hours and they do same hour delivery?” Archie says, a grin on his face.

“Did you just discover this or is it an ongoing habit?” Betty asks, and Archie’s expression is such a clear response that he doesn’t have to say anything. Betty tries to focus on the fact that Archie makes the kind of ridiculously large sums of money where even living in Manhattan doesn’t stress him out (very much).

Then because it’s very much the truth, she says, “Thank you. Thank you so much!” and she hugs Veronica, before moving on to Archie and Toni. She always tries to hug Veronica first because even after all these years she’s the one whose least sure of her place in their family.

After, all the kids want hugs too, because of course they do. Betty has plenty to share, she feels so full of love.

 

11:22 AM

Jughead wakes up, not because of sound, the apartment is strangely quiet for mid-day, but because he has a warm wet patch on his chest.

He wonders why at the same moment he notices the weight that accompanies the patch.

It takes him three seconds to realize that the weight is his daughter and the wet patch is her drool. It is a very disorientating three seconds. 

After that he moves carefully, readjusting his body so he can see her properly. Her head is already covered with downy black hair, and she has perfect teacup ears. 

He can’t believe he’s the parent of someone this small, this vulnerable. 

Before their shared nap, Jughead had fed her some of the milk bank milk the hospital had sent home with them. It had been a struggle, but every swallow she took, her tiny throat moving, felt like a victory. 

He’s still in the easy chair in their bedroom, Betty’s asleep on the bed, sleeping on her back, limbs out like a starfish. Jace is curled into one side and River into the other. 

Jughead can’t believe he’s the father of three. This moment feels more surreal than the moment he married Betty. That was something he built towards over years, and the same was true with Jace and River. Jo’s arrival was so sudden, so unexpected, that it doesn’t feel real yet.

 

2:45 PM

It’s terrible, but Jo just won’t stop crying. Betty’s tried burping, changing diapers, feeding, swaddling, swaying, even singing, but nothing is working. The baby keeps making miserable noises as if they are torturing her. 

Betty’s currently doing this thing where she’s bouncing on the balls of her feet and holding the baby cradled in her arms while singing hush-a-bye. 

“Make her stop!” River yells loudly from the other room.

“That’s not how it works,” Jughead yells back. He’s upright on the bed, trying to google some sort of solution. 

“Maybe we should check her temperature again?” Betty asks, although it’s been normal the last two times.

“It’s not that,” Jughead says.

Jace walks into the room, climbs up on the bed, and gestures Betty over with a waving hand.

Betty has no idea what he could possibly have in mind, but still she walks over till they’re close enough to touch, almost. That’s when Jace presses his thumbs against the side of his head, exposing his palms and wiggling his fingers. He also sticks out his tongue for good measure. 

It’s adorable, but there’s no way any of it could work, because Jo’s crying so hard her eyes are closed. Still Jace tries for over a minute before shrugging and then jumping off the bed (better of then on). 

When Jace leaves the room he closes the door behind him, which will help muffle the sound, at least a little.

“I’m calling Lucas, he’s done the baby thing five times before. He must know something.”

That’s true. It’s funny because even though she and Jughead are veteran parents in most contexts, they really are newbies in terms of being parents to a newborn.

“You might as well try. Plus they should know we have a baby now,” Betty says. And then because her legs are so tight she does a squat, then because it feels so good to actually move, she does another one. 

Jo falls quiet. Betty wonders if it’s related to the squats, so she stops momentarily only to be greeted with a howl. 

She starts up again and Jo calms right away. 

“Wow,” Jughead says. “That’s so strange.”

Betty wants to laugh but can’t for fear that it will upset Jo all over again. “It seems to be working. It’s not sustainable indefinitely though.”

 

3:15 PM

Jughead’s bouncing on a silver exercise ball, one of those large inflatable ones that you see at gyms and Physical therapists, Jo’s in his arms, asleep. 

The ball was Lucas’s suggestion, but Jughead’s still a little shocked that it’s working so well. He’s not sure why either. Maybe Jo’s mom walked a lot while pregnant. Maybe inside the womb, walking feels like bouncing. 

Jughead gets up carefully and brings Jo over to the bassinet Archie had had delivered at noon. It’s far too fancy looking for something that Jo can only fit in temporarily, but Jughead tries not to feel guilty about it. 

It was Archie’s decision to buy it after all, and they’ll make sure to pass it on to someone else with a baby so it gets more than one use. 

Jughead lays Jo down softly on the pink mattress, so that her back presses against the mattress. She twitches for a moment, but doesn’t wake, and he can’t help but feel like it’s some sort of victory. 

He leaves their bedroom, closing the door carefully behind him. Betty, Jace, and River are all sitting on the sofa looking a little worn out. Betty’s reading from Jo’s Boys out loud, and Jughead can’t help but admire how cozy they look. 

Jughead sits down next to River. Betty doesn’t stop reading, but she does reach out a hand and rests it on Jughead’s thigh before she has to move it to turn the page. 

When she finishes the book she puts it down on the coffee table. 

“Are babies always so exhausting?” Jace asks.

“We don’t know.” Jughead answers honestly. “Although Jo will grow up. Everyone starts out as a baby.” 

“I knew that,” River says, rolling his eyes. 

“We were definitely better at being babies than Jo.” Jace says confidently, even though there’s no one around that could confirm or deny that statement. 

Betty’s cell rings. Jughead can see that the call originated from the buildings buzzer system. He wonders who it could be. “Hello?” Betty says into the phone.

“It’s Lucas.” The voice on the other end of the line says. “We couldn’t resist coming. We promise we won’t stay longer than 15 minutes.”

 

5:12 PM

Betty’s feeding the baby a bottle in the quiet of the bedroom. Outside in the living room, Lucas and Lila’s family is still there, shouting and talking. Happy to be together. 

She loves Lucas, Lila and all five of their kids but right now her head hurts from exhaustion, from a day that’s gone on far too long, with sporadic naps and food at weird times. 

The funny thing about having Jo in her arms is that Betty suddenly feels a little less jealous of women who actually give birth. She can’t imagine the experience of giving birth, followed by a day like the one she’s lived today, would be easy. At least her body, short on sleep and tired from too many squats, doesn’t hurt from the trauma of pushing a human out of it. 

The baby’s eating better now than she was earlier. She actually seems hungry. They have a timer set for every two and a half hours and they feed her accordingly. Even throughout the night they are going to have to do that, till she gains some weight. 

Lila had slipped Betty the number of a night doula, who apparently helps with newborns so the parents can get a good night sleep. Betty would love to make fun of the name, but instead she’s just grateful for the reference. 

Betty notices that the din in the living room seems to have quieted and she feels a hint of hope. Maybe they will just have a moment of peace again. The door to her bedroom flies open and Jace dashes in.

“The L’s left! Archie’s coming over with pizza.”

Normally Betty would always like to see Archie, but she suspects that he’s coming with the kids in tow. It’s Sunday and he usually takes them every Sunday so that Toni and Veronica get a date night. 

Betty’s so grateful for how that’s all worked out, how Archie’s managed to have a family even without finding romantic love, the one thing that he seems to not be successful at. 

He loves being a father, has taken to it in a way that surprises her. He’s not just there for the trips to Coney Island and first day of school moments, but he knows to be there when they have colds or a hard day at daycare. 

“Are the girls coming?” Betty asks.

“Of course! It’s Sunday night!”

Only then does Betty actually make the connection between Sunday and Monday, between weekend and workday. Jughead has a Monday class at 9 AM that she, and perhaps he, has totally forgotten about.

“Jug!” she screams, the baby startling in her arms, and then going back to sucking on the bottle.

“What?” Jughead says running in. 

“I totally forgot about your Monday morning class till now.”

Jughead smiles, it’s the same goofy grin he’s always had. The one that she loves so desperately. “I already canceled it and the Tuesday class. My boss wasn’t happy about it, but he did understand.”

It’s hard to think about Jughead going back to work and her being alone with the baby, in just a day or two. But each day is a new one. Yesterday she could not possibly have imagined today. 

“Thank goodness,” Betty says, already suspecting that she might call that night doula’s number first thing in the morning. 

 

7:24 PM

“Teresa’s driving Fred up first thing tomorrow,” Archie says. “He can’t wait to meet Jo.”

“He’s already met her on Facetime,” Jace says.

“That doesn’t count.”

“Does too,” River chimes in.

Jughead has to admit that he sides with Archie and Fred on this one. There’s no way to feel the heft of a baby, the warmth of it, over video chat. 

“I can’t wait to see him,” Jace says. “I want to show him my soccer trophy.”

Jughead shakes his head. Already Jace loves sports in a way he and Betty don’t particularly understand. Archie does though, and his face lights up at the mention of the trophy. “Fred will love that.”

Mia sighs, “Fred loves everything.” 

Jughead can’t help but laugh at that before saying, “He certainly loves his grandkids.” 

 

9:30 PM

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt so tired,” Betty says, yawning halfway through the sentence. “Maybe we are too old to be parents.” 

Jughead laughs “Actually the oldest mother is the world was seventy when she gave birth.” 

Betty can’t help but shudder a little at the thought. Jo doesn’t react at all. She continues to suck her formula from the bottle, a look Betty projects as contentment on her face. 

1:45 AM

Jughead wakes to an alarm. His brain a foggy, overstuffed place. He glances at the time and realizes he must have slept for the last three hours. It feels like a miracle. That’s the longest he’s slept since yesterday. 

Beside him Jo stirs in her bassinet. This is the first time she’s slept for three hours in one shot and he feels impressed and grateful. 

“I can get her this time,” Betty murmurs groggily from her side of the bed. 

“Go back to sleep,” Jughead says and Betty rotates so that her face is pressed into the pillow. He thinks she might already be heavily asleep again, which feels like a victory. 

Jughead picks Jo up from the bassinet. He checks her diaper and then changes it as quietly as he can. He’s already gotten faster at that.

It’s heavy with pee which is actually an excellent sign. It means that Jo is actually processing what they are giving her. 

In the fridge there’s some milk bank milk that Violet warned them was more valuable than gold. Jughead warms it up carefully in a bowl of hot water. Jo squirms in his arms but doesn’t cry. She still seems half asleep. 

When he brings the false nipple to her lips, she latches on to it well and sucks. Jughead watches carefully to see the way her throat clearly moves to indicate swallowing. 

Jo’s so very much alive, so real, and so his, that even though he’s exhausted and there’s not even a hint of light in the sky outside, he feels like the luckiest man in the world. 

She falls back asleep after drinking half the bottle and Jughead puts it back in the fridge and then places her softly in the bassinet. 

When he slides into bed, he’s surprised that Betty moves, shifting into him so that she’s the small spoon. He thinks she’s still asleep, that even her sleeping body knows what to do when he enters a bed. He gently murmurs into the top of her head, the words, “I love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off a huge thank you for everyone who has made it this far in A Written Life. The Grand Mistake universe has turned out to be a lot larger than I’d originally planned and I’m so grateful for your support along the way. This version of Bughead will probably always have my heart.
> 
> On that note there’s going to be one more (ok, maybe two), oneshot coda’s. So if you want to see them, please subscribe to the series as a whole! The first/maybe only, has been half written forever so it should be published pretty soon.
> 
> Also I know a lot of people were rooting for a bio child in this chapter, and I went back on forth on it a lot, I even made a pros and con’s list and may have enlisted KittiLee’s opinion on it. 
> 
> Ultimately this series, even the first installment, has always been about found family. I feel like a bio child would change the dynamic of this universe, and perhaps put an emphasis on the wrong thing. But as always I’m open to others opinions.
> 
> Also I head one women say “She can’t be bisexual. She’s dating a guy!” today on the streets and got very angry and I had to vent on Betty’s behalf, so there you have it. 
> 
> Finally I’m always grateful for comments!

**Author's Note:**

> There is a chance there will be more of this. I'm not committing to it. But if I added more to the story it would be here, in this format (a day in the life, over various years). So if you want to see more, subscribe.
> 
> I have so much headcanon about this Betty and this Jug and their lives together. If you want to know more about any of that you can always send me an ask on Tumblr. I’m Darknessaroundus over there as well.


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